


Soul

by TheOriginalSuki



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Bedsharing, F/M, Fairytale elements, Fluff, Greek myth - Freeform, Marriage of Convenience, Mustafar, Slow Burn, awkward virgins, cupid and psyche, dubcon Jedi mind tricks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 40,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24286345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOriginalSuki/pseuds/TheOriginalSuki
Summary: The Sith enjoy a certain flexibility around rules, which Kylo fully intends to take advantage of.  How can Snoke deny him an apprentice of his own if she's also his wife?  (In which Kylo Ren still sucks at proposals, but gets a wedding anyway, and it's just the beginning.)  A Cupid and Psyche story.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 589
Kudos: 365





	1. The Bride

It was not Kylo's intention at first to take the girl to wife. His task had been to collect the Force sensitive scavenger and deliver her to Supreme Leader Snoke. 

"Darkness rises," Snoke said, "and light to meet it." 

Kylo thought his master referred to Luke Skywalker, a prospect that simultaneously elated and terrified him. The man Skywalker, who was his uncle, and the last Jedi. They had been unified in purpose once, but that was long ago. Kylo determined to seek the voice of his grandfather in guidance, to increase fasting and meditation. He must be prepared if he was to confront his former master again. 

Then Snoke followed the well-trod avenues in Kylo's mind and showed him. A girl. A nobody. But a spark in the Force too incendiary not to put out.

"I would have this creature brought before me," Snoke said. "I will break her, the way I broke you, _my rabid cur_ , and bring her into the Darkness."

"And what if she refuses, Master?"

"Then I shall kill her."

***

Between cornering the girl on Jakku and bringing her before the Supreme Leader of the First Order, an idea germinated and took root in the cracked foundations of Kylo's loyalty. She'd put up a fight the likes of which he'd not seen, except in the canyon krayt of Tatooine. Uncultivated, it was true, but her aptitude for the Force was apparent: it charged her and pulled at everything that drifted near, like static electricity. What was more, when he dove into her unconscious mind, he saw everything: the island, the vast ocean of loneliness, the fear. It spoke to him. They were the same, he and she. And if she could not be saved, then ... what was to become of him?

He felt her resounding, timid note in the Force. It occurred to him that he'd been aware of her subtle presence before now -- perhaps since as long as he could remember -- as one is aware of a familiar aspect of one's childhood home, only ever considering it when it is brought to attention after many years. Then the thing -- perhaps a corner in afternoon sunlight or the brackets of a shelf -- looks both alien and familiar. Or rather, she was the motif in a piece of music one has never paused to acknowledge, taken it for granted as part of the greater whole So Kylo felt as he stroked her Force signature, almost absently. Had Supreme Leader Snoke truly not detected her before now? Kylo was clumsy and volatile. Surely Snoke had lifted the pattern of her from the Force when Kylo had overlooked her. 

Desire churned and welled within him. This was not his ordinary cocktail of pain and conflict. He leaned into the discomfort. _Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength I gain power._ The answer floated up onto the surface.

_Kylo wanted her for himself._

It was not the Sith way for one with a living master to take an apprentice. There were, however, rare precedents of wife-slavery practised among the ancient Sith (the line of ownership in their kraterocratic system was rather nebulous and lax with consent). Kylo's own grandfather, the Sith lord Vader, had had a wife, from whose progeny Kylo proceeded. Although, the marriage occured before the man then known as Anakin Skywalker defected to the Dark Side. Still, marriage would offer the girl a singular kind of protection. A union of true affection put both parties at risk. But one of convenience? A legal role as wife would give his enemies, especially those within the First Order, pause to take her from him. And a Sith religious sealing would make anyone hesitate to interfere, without pristine and faultless cause. Even Snoke.

Kylo expected to be soundly punished for acting without his master's approval. But he was well-accustomed to pain. If he could chasten himself enough to take the brunt of Snoke's beating without lashing back, he just might get what he wanted.

And what he wanted, though he could make little sense of it as it came to him, was to keep the spark alive a little longer, at least long enough to recall the memory of warmth into his lifeless hands.

***

Rey's days bled, one into the other, so much so that she felt time retract. Her entire existence a series of single dashes carved into the durasteel side of the AT-AT, over and over again, the summed tally of a life unlived. When the black-robed hunters broke through that repetition, with their featureless, masked faces and weapons as of tongues of flame, she would have given anything to go back to the safe and unextraordinary.

How she knew they wanted her, she couldn’t say. She had heard that on wet planets, a downward press from the atmosphere foretells rainfall. This was something like that. A pressure descending on her, as though the many-thousand eyes of a demon watched from some secret place within her very self. No hope in hiding.

She ran. They followed.

She fought them off with her quarterstaff, and kept them on the chase for a night and half a day (sometimes losing them entirely) before they cornered her in the marketplace in Niima. Everyone -- vendors and scavengers, spice runners and Inner Rim merchants, ex-Rebel drop troopers and former Empire sympathisers -- scattered before them as before harbingers of death. Rey faced them alone. The pressing, pressing contracted all around her. The masked and caped figures fell upon her, as carrion birds to a corpse, and fed her darkness.

When she next woke, Rey was confined to an upward table, tilted on an incline. A small, closed space. She could feel the whir of mechanisms above and below. One of the masked creatures which quarried her stooped in a shadowy corner, seemingly regarding, though it was hard to tell. No light broached that impenetrable mask, which could illuminate the creature's thoughts or intentions.

She found her voice, pulling it thin and flat, in order not to betray her fear. "What do you want with me?"

The mask tilted, studying. Then a low, static voice, more machine than man, spoke: "A lot of people in the galaxy are looking for you, little sand rat."

Rey bristled. The restraints at her wrists bit into her pulse. "And what kind of _person_ are you?"

He -- for Rey assumed that whatever it was, monster or no, it was _male_ \-- had been crouching in the corner. Now he stood and moved toward her, into the center of the dim, sparse room. The cold raising goosebumps on her neck and arms, the hum of false light, along with the stale recycled air, indicated they had left Jakku. Her insides dropped. Rey had never left the planet before. But she knew, by some internal homing instinct, that she was no longer in the desert.

As he moved closer, his stature became apparent. It alarmed her. Her captor dominated the small space. It seemed to shrink in comparison. The pace of her breathing quickened. Rey had never known claustrophobia before, but she was not about to start now.

She glared her defiance, in a direction she hoped intercepted his gaze. "If you even _are_ a person. And not a monster in a mask."

When he was near enough so that he had to lean to remain in her line of vision -- her neck too was restrained with a cruel hoop of durasteel against the interrogation table -- he said, "Would you like to kill me?"

In that moment, she would have lashed at any living thing that came within stabbing distance. Rey ground her teeth. "Why don't you unbind me and find out?"

The mask tilted again; she sensed amusement, at her expense.

"I _am_ a monster," he said. "You can see that, without even knowing who I am."

"And who are you?"

"I am your deliverance."

She scoffed.

He straightened and circled the perimeter. "My master wants you. He wants to enslave you and make you his. I assure you, as one speaking from experience, it is not a role for the faint of heart. If you refuse to submit, he will kill you."

Rey’s brows knotted into a frown. "Who do you serve?"

"The Supreme Leader of the First Order."

The possibilities merged in her mind's eye, muddying her vision. "And you ... you want to help me avoid one or both of those outcomes?"

He ceased his pacing and pulled up before her. He wore black, trailing robes, belted across a tree-trunk waist, and a tattered cowl about his throat and head. "I do."

She stared at the inscrutable mask. "Why?"

He shrugged. "I have my own interests in mind. Tell me. What do you know about the Jedi?"

Rey mistrusted the line of questioning. But she thought to humor him for the time being. "The Jedi? They are -- or were -- a monastic order of knights, charged with keeping peace and prosperity throughout the galaxy in ages gone. Some of the oldest ones still remember them, seeing them. As for the details, I've read about them in a book once. They worship something called the Force. Most of the Old Republic era stories involve the Jedi. They've all but died out now, or so they say."

Her captor swept aside his cowl and put a gloved hand to his waist. From his belt, he unclipped a black metal cylinder. With a flick, a crimson laser flared to life, trembling and unstable; flames of red vented on either side of the hilt, making a deadly cross-guard. Rey did not intend to flinch.

"The Jedi embody the Light side of the Force. But they are only half the story. The Force has a Dark side as well. Those that follow the path of Darkness are called Sith. They were once the enforcers of a vast and mighty empire. It is the nature of the Sith to strive for power, but it is a treacherous and narrow ascent. Do you grasp this so far, scavenger?"

Rey nodded.

"To ascend as a lord in the Sith Order, an apprentice must murder his master. I am not yet of sufficient skill and power to kill the Supreme Leader. But I want an apprentice of my own. And I believe I've discovered a way to take what I want."

"I don't understand."

" _You_ , scavenger. I want to take you as my apprentice."

"Me?"

"You need a teacher."

She blinked. His meaning skidded overhead, ephemeral and out of reach, like clouds across a scorched sky. 

Then he drew near her, without moving. 

It was as though all solid matter faded, ghosts contrasted with the razor’s edge of his being, which pressed against her mind. He -- he was _inside_. Running his fingers through her consciousness, as through strands of hair. Rey shuddered. It was a kind of cool submersion into a subterranean well -- like the first plunge into the deep dark of Empire wreckage, from the relentless heat and sand -- an invasion, refreshing and shocking both. He had been here before, she realised. While she slept. He'd crawled around her mind and read her most secret places.

The knowledge enraged her. Without knowing how, she hauled against him. The cool freshness resisted, but she shoved and burned away at it. She did not notice, until she successfully ejected him from the privacy of her mind, that the masked person had fallen back, breathless, his stance wide, braced for impact.

For a while, nothing was said. Only the sounds of their laboured breathing filled the bare, cheerless room.

Then he spoke, the kind of lazy satisfaction of a carnivore after eating its fill. "You see now."

Rey shook her head, harder and harder, until it felt like it would fly off its hinges. "No, I'm not a Jedi -- or a, a Sith -- I don't even know anything about the Force, outside a handful of ancient myths turned fairy tales. I just want to go back home! Please. My parents, my parents are coming back for me!"

Her captor twirled the living blade and extinguished it, sliding the hilt back into his belt. "I can't do that. We'd both be killed. Not a desirable outcome."

Rey's head fell with a thud against the hard table. All her life she'd been nothing, nobody. And now this abysmal truth, subverted in the worst possible way.

"I'll give you some time to think it through," her captor said. "We are not more than two days' from the Supreme Leader's flagship. I cannot buy any more time than that, so use it wisely." He turned in an eddy of dark material toward the exit, opening the pneumatic door with a wave.

"Wait! What is your name?"

Without turning he tossed back a reply. "You may call me Lord Ren."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What the Hades, let's do this.


	2. The Bridegroom

Kylo felt satisfied with their interaction. The girl had been neither timid nor feral, but was a pleasant mixture of wary and interested. Her fear, likewise, was anticipated and welcomed. Fear put him in control.

But when he had pushed into her mind ... he could not have anticipated a more favourable reaction. The girl pulsed with raw strength. It wasn't just that she was capable, it was that she was complementary. Her steady fire, her concentrated and measured wrath heightened his own mercurial Force abilities. Together, they could be powerful. Kylo felt a strange kind of buoyancy. Something he couldn't recall having felt since he was an untainted child on Corellia. _Together_.

Her fear of him, combined with her defiance, enticed something darker in him. It was good to have her anger and her disdain. Kylo understood what they meant. He could use them to their combined advantage. This was the Sith way.

Still, he had to strike a balance. She could not fear him so much that his offer became unpalatable and the Supreme Leader preferred. He had limited time to convince her of his superior path for her. So he had the stormtroopers go into her interrogation cell and remove her to a more comfortable detainment room and feed her rations. They reported that she did not turn her nose up at the bland, colourless foodstuff; Kylo all but congratulated himself on the great fortune of finding such an un-fussy wife.

The _wife_. He had not been forthright in his offer, not completely. He did intend to make her his apprentice, but the steps to that required that he lay claim to her first in a sacred and legal way. He had the means of validating such a union without the blessing of the Supreme Leader, a loophole that would certainly be corrected once the thing was done.

***

Rey was still reeling from her encounter with Lord Ren when the stormtroopers brought her out of confinement and put her back in again. These soldiers she was familiar with, as they sometimes reconnoitred in Niima for missions leaving Mid-Rim, unlike the masked warriors who hunted her across Jakku. She could not differentiate between the fell warriors any more than she could the stormtroopers, so she couldn't be sure if she had encountered Lord Ren before. When the group first cornered her outside an itinerant shepherd settlement, no words passed between the hunters and their quarry. She only knew she was hunted, and that she must flee. The senses with which she knew their motives had since been revealed to her. This thing called the Force -- something she had not had much time to think of before, except in the darkest hours when sleep failed her, exhaustion stealing even that, when she could only fling a prayer to the sky that some god would answer,and morning find her parents returning for her.

The soldiers in white armour were not ungentle with her, but she didn't give them the satisfaction of an easy prisoner. She resisted just enough to let them know she was a force to be reckoned with but that she had chosen to go easy on them. They removed her to what she could only assume was a prisoner's cell, an empty room with a low, hard cot without bed linens. When they brought her the unattractive tube of food, however, her resistance only held so long. She determined it indeed was food, and that it was sealed, so unlikely to have been tampered with, unless by someone truly insidious. Rey decided to take her chances and eat all of it.

After she had her fill, a temporary period of sleepiness hovered over her. So she lay on her side, hugging herself in the cold mechanical air, but she didn't close her eyes. Never close your eyes if you're not one hundred percent certain of your security. Doing so had lost her two days' worth of rations and almost her life, on several occasions.

As Rey lay on her hard bed, she wracked her brain for means of escape. If they had indeed launched into space, as her instincts suspected, there were precious few places she could run. The First Order was a distant threat on Jakku, when one's primary foes were thirst and hunger. But she knew enough about it to judge it Not Good. The Supreme Leader, even more nebulous than the Order itself, was sometimes described as a god, sometimes a devil. The way Lord Ren spoke of him, she suspected the latter.

There was the Resistance -- the military branch of the New Republic developed specifically to offset the First Order in the galaxy. If the First Order had heard of Rey -- or sensed her, or _whatever_ \-- surely the general, a former senator, who had herself been instrumental in defeating the old Empire, would send someone along to help? If she were really as desired a commodity as Lord Ren made her out to be, wouldn't the Resistance be after her as well? Maybe, if she cooperated long enough, the Resistance would find and free her.

Even as she thought it, doubt crept in and seized her. She was a nobody. She was a lonely, filthy scavenger from nowhere. Yet her captor said she was special. And she had felt ... _something_. Rey tried to hold both pieces of knowledge together in her mind. They repelled each other and just made her brain weary.

The Lord Ren had been quite forthright in coming to her with his information, and she wasn't wholly trusting of it. Though she couldn't sniff out a reason for why he would want to manipulate her into apprenticeship, unless there were some greater behind him pulling the strings. He had said he could take what he wanted. Surely he could take her. But there seemed to be some quality that hinged on her consent, that would give him the upper hand in the battle for custody of her.

Then there was the casual revelation that a Sith master was succeeded by his apprentice. Was Lord Ren inviting her into a kind of truce with full and consenting knowledge that she would kill him eventually? And what kind of twisted creatures spent their lives attaining power and knowledge like the desert cactus collects sand, only to lose it all to the one who should have been their legacy?

Well, if she was going to survive, she would use her upper hand and wrangle what she could with it. She'd lived this long.

***

Kylo gave her exactly half a day's cycle and then he went in to her. She had been lying on her side on the bare bed but hopped to attention as soon as he entered, scrubbing the sleep from her eyes. Physical distance had muted her resonance in the Force but being in the same level and room on the Star Destroyer, within a few feet of separation, sent his synapses reeling. The dive into her mind before -- and her subsequent push right back into him -- had left behind residue. Or else some thread tied between, putting up resistance.

"Scavenger," Kylo nodded. 

His escort, two stormtroopers, stayed behind him outside the door with their blasters. It was more for her benefit than his. He knew he could stop her if she tried attacking him in his mind again, but she might be deterred if she saw he was defended. Better for this to go smoothly.

The girl stood, and backed up, facing him. "Lord Ren."

"I trust you've found being our guest tolerable enough."

Her bewildered look was almost endearing.

"Am I, a _guest_? I feel like I'm a prisoner."

"That depends on what you've decided."

Her eyes slid uneasily around the metal cell, despite having studied every inch of it. Kylo had seen her crawling and creeping and stretching and hitting via surveillance. You could take the sand rat out of the desert, but --

"You haven't even asked me my name." The narrowness of the vowels told him she spoke through clenched teeth.

He inclined his head. "No, you're right. How rude of me. I assume it's not just 'Scavenger'?"

He thought a muscle trembled in her jaw, but it could have been the regulation First Order cell lights, which were prone to flickering. "Rey. My name's Rey."

"Very well, Rey. We are coming to a point in our journey where we may take a detour that will not be noticed until two and a half cycles from now. A nasty magnetic storm off Unknown Regions causes our communications to go temporarily dark around Endor, unless we move way out of the way of the projected route, thus doubling our time. I would like to use the magnetic storm as a cover, to alter our direction. By the time they notice we've failed to pick back up on route, I will have solidified my claim on you. But whether or not we carry on as planned, or implement our little detour, is entirely up to you."

She studied him without speaking. Then, "How can I trust you? You won't even take off that mask, I -- I don't understand what it is you need from me."

Kylo inhaled and released a slow breath through the modulator of his mask. "That you see my face is entirely unnecessary. You've seen into my mind, anyhow. I should think that's far more satisfactory."

The girl's brows hovered up. Oh -- didn't she realise?

He sighed. Made a sign to the stormtroopers and touched the console near the door, which closed with a pump of air.

The girl -- no, _Rey_ , Rey was her name -- lowered her arms to her sides and widened her stance. She was not at all comfortable at this development, and she was, consciously or no, going on the offensive.

"When you pushed back against my intrusion into your mind, you did essentially the same thing. Do you recall?"

Rey scowled at him with her scrunched eyebrows, her innumerable freckles. If she was trying to look formidable, she was achieving the opposite. "No, I don't --"

" _Try_."

She looked at him in her guarded animal way. Then she let her eyes drift to the ceiling, and he could see as the memory of it came slipping back to her. "You -- you were -- you're afraid."

Kylo remained very still. His instinct was to pounce on this revelation; tear it to shreds with teeth and claws, until nothing remained of it. But this would only stall her progress. If he was going to work with her, he would have to let her in.

"And -- _angry_." Now she looked at him and the guardedness was astonishingly gone. "There's so much darkness in you, it --" She shuddered.

"That's the Dark Side of the Force," Kylo said. "Here is your first lesson. The Force has a Dark Side and a Light. But where the Light Side is cold and sterile, the Dark is charged and powerful. You will learn about both aspects of the Force, and may choose whatever path you wish, if you agree to be my apprentice."

"Your _apprentice_. And what does that entail?"

"I'm so glad you asked. As I mentioned, it is illicit for me to take on an apprentice before the death of my master. So I've contrived a means to sidestep that rule."

"What means is that?"

"The Sith are a religion, just like any other, and they recognise certain rites as sacred and indissoluble. If I were to take you as my wife, the Supreme Leader would be forced to leave you under my care and guidance. You would be at my disposal, to do with what I wished, and should I wish to teach you ..."

Rey paled. Her lips parted, just so, and the colour fled them. "M- _marry_ you?"

"If we change course now, our altered route will take us to liaise on the volcanic planet Mustafar, which is home to an Alazmec cult whose function is the worship and protection of the artifacts of the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader. At their temple, we could perform the sacred rites, and even Snoke would be impotent to annul -- what are you doing?"

The scavenger -- _Rey_ \-- had backed up entirely, so that she pressed against the far wall. Her breaths came quick and shallow. She seemed to be muttering. Kylo took a step closer and leaned forward, trying to gather her words.

"No no no, not this, not like this, it was supposed to be, I was supposed to be, I --"

He took another step toward her and Rey jumped a foot as though he'd just shocked her with a stun blaster.

"I assure you, marriage to me is far less unsavoury than you imagine it to be, and worlds better than the kind of misery you look forward to as a slave of Supreme Leader Snoke."

She did not appear to calm down, and Kylo was at a loss. What kind of comfort did a woman want, anyway? How did a man go about getting a wife? It wasn't a knowledge he'd ever thought he'd need; and like all things that were neither useful nor amusing to him, he didn't bother looking into it. He raked back through his memories and skimmed something warm and tender, like a bruise: a mouth quick to smile and a bosom radiating comfort and hair, beautiful long hair, always in braids -- but Kylo snapped away from the image before it could possess him entirely.

The girl slumped down to the floor with her head in her hands. He could feel the anxiety pulsing off her. He was not unaccustomed to minding negative emotions from people, but hers throbbed along the thread of their connection, thickening it into a rope with every pulse. Even then, he ought to have sucked up the darkness like a black leech, stored it away for better use. But he did _not_ like her this way. It felt crooked, uncomfortable, as when one puts a shirt on back to front, or has been walking with friction in his shoe. Fix it. Fix it or it will drive you crazy.

So Kylo acted, as he often did, without giving much, if any thought at all, to what he was about to do next. Stepping forward, he pulled at the fingers of one gloved hand and unclothed it, so that his warm, dry palm contacted the cool air in the detainment room. He crossed toward her and put the hand out.

With his hand and mind he reached toward her, beckoning, stopping just before making contact.

There was a gasp. Her head darted up, and she stared at him, mouth agape. "Don't be afraid," Kylo said, giving her mind a little nudge and then withdrawing. His hand he kept over her head, as though in benediction. "I feel it, too."

***

Rey still wanted to kill him -- to cut him away and kick him back so that he couldn’t hurt her, or worse -- get into the soft, dark places, where a single wound would prove fatal. But now that want mixed with a hazy, drunken sort of calm, a connectedness, smooth and unmade by the work of human hands, like stones from the fabled riverbeds that were often bartered at the marketplace of Niima. She didn't _like_ that he drifted so near. She wanted to raise her hackles and bite, but -- the loneliness which she tried to harden into a callus breathed and bled at this mental touch. 

She had always been soft. Always. As an orphan, she'd been warned that a single kindness, a slip of renegade hope, could be the death of her. But despite knowing they were right, Rey could not mutilate herself into something cruel and barren. She could not be other than what she was. Her hope was a desert-raised thing as well; it could withstand a great deal without shrivelling up to die.

The Darkness in the man before her -- for he was indeed a man, as the clean, broad, thick hand over her indicated -- scared her, repelled her. But it was not _all_ he was. Because there was something there connecting them, some common ground. And Rey could only imagine that _thing_ was hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I've got Jakku in the right area. By comparing maps, I determined it is in the Expansion Region or Mid Rim but close to the Unknown Regions, so they'll change their course around Endor and head for Mustafar -- if Rey accepts Kylo's proposal. ;)


	3. The Ring

Marry the faceless man, and do what she had to to survive. That was the plan. 

It wasn't the worst thing Rey'd ever done in the interests of self-preservation. Once she had stolen portions from a boy not much older than she. Guilt throttled her after, until she threw up her ill-gotten gains. This at least took no victims but herself. And maybe she would get something out of it. Lord Ren wanted to train her. Nor did he seem to be put out at the potentiality for that training to turn on him. 

She thought her husband-to-be would remove her to better accommodation after she agreed to their engagement (a simple “all right” from her that solicited no more than an abrupt nod from him). But he left her in the holding cell for another hour or two, before the stormtroopers reentered, this time with a thin metal hoop. 

One of the stormtroopers lifted off the helmet. Beneath was a normal-looking young woman, with dark skin and a halo of dark hair, like the cloud of a nebula; the revelation was both a comfort and a concern. It gladdened Rey to see someone so like her here, under the malevolent supervision of the First Order, obviously thriving. But it worried her as well, that someone so young and robust would be accustomed to a life of war and military servitude. 

While the two other stormtroopers held their blasters at the ready, guarding the door, the young woman moved toward Rey with the ring. She flicked her wrist, and the thing came apart like a cracked egg -- or rather, opened, and Rey saw what it was the woman intended to do.

"Forgive me, my Lady, but Lord Ren has requested you be monitored via bio-collar. It's for your own safety."

Rey swallowed. It wasn’t exactly an engagement ring (Rey liked to swipe the ragged books telling of Core World romances from the kindling pile), and the thought of something tight about her throat sent hiccoughs of panic into her pulse.

“It won’t hurt,” the young woman assured her. “See?” She turned it over, allowing it to wink silver in the dull lighting. “It monitors your vitals while keeping track of your location. Once it closes on you, it'll resonate with your biological information, and only the one who programmed it can remove it. It won’t come off, but it won’t harm you, even if you try to pry at it.”

Rey’s body loosened in gratitude. Having it explained to her gave her an illusion of control she was too desperate to second guess. She gave a nod, and stepped toward her. The woman clasped the ring around Rey's neck, which sealed with a click. It was close to her skin but not strangling.

"I'm TZ-1719.” Her familiar accent comforted Rey. “I'm to be your companion and guide for the foreseeable future."

"That's ... your name?"

"I've no need for any other." She started to lift the helmet back over her head.

"No, wait." Rey eyed the other two stormtroopers at the door. Then she trained her eyes on the woman's. "Please leave it off. Would you?"

The woman's dark eyes shifted imperceptibly -- the only sign something was amiss. Had she ever been asked to be seen before?

Then, resigning, "If you wish, my Lady."

"It's just Rey. You must have a name that you go by, something. I can't call you by a serial number like an android."

The woman tilted her lips in contemplation. "I've always liked the name Jannah."

Rey smiled, something to reassure her, to say, you see? We are in this together.

"That's a beautiful name."

"I'm to take you to the med bay now, Lady Rey. For all the normal health screenings and vaccinations. And I'm to scan for your measurements afterward." She pivoted neatly, her inner soldier taking command. She extended her arm, right-angled, robotic. "Please, after you."

Rey moved toward the pneumatic door, and the helmeted stormtroopers stepped ahead of her. The air of the corridor hit her like a cold wall. She shivered, and Jannah, who held her mask-helmet in the crook of her elbow said, kindly, "Space is cold, I'm afraid. It takes some getting used to."

Rey gave another smile, though she feared her supply dwindled. "Thank you, Jannah."

***

They took her to the med bay, where two droids and a human medic examined her. She was asked to disrobe and put on a gown of thin material that hit just above the knee, and opened in folds in the back and front for easy access. The stormtroopers were dismissed from the room, but Jannah remained to assist Rey. 

Rey was unaccustomed to such foreign, tactile attention. When the doctor told her she was going to put her hands in through the dress to feel Rey's abdomen, Rey didn't comprehend until the cold, analytical fingers prodded her soft tummy and hips. She almost slapped her. The doctor made her stand up and bend at the waist so she could trail her finger along Rey's spine. She shone a light into her eyes and made her stick her tongue out and nearly choked her prying it jaw apart to peer further into Rey’s throat than was humanly possible. She counted the rhythm of Rey's heart and made Rey breath and puff into a container until black dots starred her vision and she nearly fainted.

Rey hated it. If not for Jannah standing near, warm and steady, with the skim of a smile to comfort her, Rey might have bolted.

"Now for the blood work," the doctor said. She was an older woman, but very clean. The elders of scavenger communities on Jakku were old before their years, wrinkled with use and worry, but layered in rags of clothing and junk jewellery of broken glass and debris. They were also much, much warmer, of skin and speech. But Rey thought it must just be that space was a cold place.

The doctor showed Rey the thin, sterile needle and asked her to expose the inside of her elbow. Everything was fine until the vicious woman stabbed her with it.

***

"There seems to be a problem on the medbay," reported LH-2361.

Kylo, who was distracted with an incoming message from the Supreme Leader, waved violently for the stormtrooper to silence or lose his power of speech indefinitely.

The message was not directly from Snoke, but from General Hux, a pinched, sallow kind of man whose function was steady workhorse to Kylo's capricious lapdog. Needless to say, Hux did not appreciate sharing their master's esteem and attention. It particularly irked Kylo when Snoke had dealings with him through Hux, and Hux knew this, and acted accordingly snide.

The holo crackled and solidified, and a small General Hux, with orange, back-combed hair and an immaculate posture in the streamlined uniform of the First Order officer personnel appeared. _Not_ a live transmission. So there was still mercy in the universe.

"The Supreme Leader has asked me to send word that he is coming to intercept your journey just outside of Koda Station. He is impatient to see the scavenger for himself and bids you prepare her for transportation and boarding on the Supremacy. We will reassess rendezvous time if needed after you emerge from the magnetic storm. This is important, Ren. You’ve gotten away with your little tantrums and slip ups up until now, but Supreme Leader is starting to see the value in a more orderly chain of command. For your sake, don't screw it up."

Hux flickered out. Kylo took the holocom into the palm of his hand and held it there. Then he jerked his arm back and threw it at the nearest solid object; this happened to be a boxy service droid sliding inconspicuously around the corner of the console. It left this life in a magnificent explosion of sparks and springs and gears.

Kylo sucked in a long swath of sterilised air through his mask. "Soldier. _Now_ you may report."

The stormtrooper hesitated a second or two, and then deemed the coast clear. "Yes, Lord Ren. There is a problem with the ... with your ..."

Kylo cut him off with a whip-sharp jerk of his head. "The scavenger? Is she hurt? Ill?"

"I don't believe so, Lord. Squadron Yellow Gamma report hearing signs of a struggle from inside the medbay. TZ-1719 is within, but has yet to report. I'm sure whatever it is is under control, but I thought you should be informed, since it involves the scavenger."

"I'll go down to them. I mean to collect her, anyway." He made some swift adjustments to the console, sending a clipped military signal designating Hux's message received. "In the meantime, prepare my shuttle. I want it ready for immediate take off."

"As you wish, Lord Ren."

***

Kylo summoned his Knights, conveying his orders as they walked the halls of the Destroyer. He would bring two with him on his command shuttle. The other four were to travel to Mustafar on the Night Buzzard, and tail him, granting cover if needed. They verbally affirmed his instructions, and split off, swooping like the silently deadly creatures they were.

The moment of truth was upon him. Kylo had lived his whole life, consciously and otherwise, with Snoke buried in a corner of his mind. For the majority of that time, he did not see the disadvantage of having another privy to all that transpired inside him. It just _was_. But some time after Kylo's defection to the First Order, Snoke's insidious presence twisted into a thing more iron-hard, more deliberately cruel. If before Snoke had tread carefully, wooing a young Kylo so as to bring him into the fold, he now had the boy where he wanted him; all caution dissipated. 

At first, it was easy to dismiss. Snoke loved him, didn't he? He was the only one who ever told him the truth, the only one who seemed to accept the darkness Kylo couldn't purge from his soul, but which protruded like thorns to the rose of his being. No matter how Kylo clipped them, they grew back. The disappointment in his uncle Luke was more painful than subjecting himself to that constant mutilation. At least Snoke did not hate Kylo for failing. If he hated Kylo, it was only for what he was. And because that was Snoke's nature: to hate. It was a kind of love. And Kylo was desperate for anything, a whelp begging for scraps. 

Still, the beatings and the badgerings, the humiliations and the manipulations grew worse. Kylo could not pinpoint the moment he decided he did not love Snoke anymore. He only knew that he sought, for the first time in his life, to bring a part of himself away from him, to cut the bitter, decaying creature out. To keep a secret place for himself. 

It was astonishingly easy. Who knew, this whole time, that Kylo could have detached from him, from the oppressive influence and poisonous care? The wall, as he visualised it in mediation, was a kind of mesh material, so that Snoke would feel it give when he pressed, and not suspect. But within that barrier Kylo kept many things hidden: his desire to break free, to kill the master who enslaved him; his regret, his lingering tenderness for the people who loved the boy he used to be; and now this scavenger, who he wanted for his own. He would not possess her the way Snoke possessed him. No. He wanted her vibrant and thriving: thorns and all.

Vicrul Ren was the only Knight remaining at his master's side when Kylo barged into the medbay, took one look at the chaos -- the oxygen-rich blood dripped along the floor, trailing to a beleaguered Rey, who brandished the detached limb of some heavy machine in the corner; TZ-1719, sans mask, trying to approach Rey with her hands raised; and the greying doctor, that venerable head now mussed and sweaty. Kylo guessed she had tried to insist on a blood sample, by holding Rey down. She earned those bruises then.

"Lord Ren!" TZ-1719 dropped her hands and faced him, putting herself unintentionally between him and Rey. "It was just a misunderstanding, everything is under control."

"Stand down, soldier. Straighten your uniform and report to the hangar immediately. There's been a change of plans, and you will be accompanying the Lady Rey and myself to Mustafar."

Rey dropped her bludgeon, and pointed with a shaky arm at the much-abused doctor. "She tried to _stab_ me."

"She was trying to get a blood sample, but that will have to wait for now. Come. We're leaving."

Rey blinked at him. “But I’m -- my clothes…”

“I’ve got things you can wear on my shuttle.” He put a gloved hand around her arm and steered her out of the medbay.

At first it was easy to glide her along, but she became resistant. "Let me -- let me go, I can _walk_." He allowed her to jerk her arm from his grasp and counted out four seconds waiting for her to stumble forward into a motion again. If he had reached five, he was going to haul her up by the waist and sling her over his shoulders like a human stole. He did not have time for this.

"I thought you said we would have at least another day."

"That was before Supreme Leader Snoke deigned it a good idea to come out with his entourage and meet us. Can you walk any faster?"

Rey broke into a trot, and Vicrul Ren gave his master a mask-blank look over her head. They both knew she was capable of moving at astonishing speed, as she had managed to slip their grasp for far longer than any other quarry they'd pursued. Vicrul no doubt was considering the very same tactic Kylo had a moment before, had he reached the count of five. But Kylo gave an imperceptible shake of his masked head.

At the hangar, they were joined by Ushar Ren with his war club, and he and Vicrul boarded Kylo's command shuttle ahead, followed by the stormtrooper, while Kylo hung back and spoke to Rey. "You have your ring. Be aware that it is wired into my personal holocomm at all times, independent of location, so do not consider this an opportunity for escape. Even if you were, somehow, able to sneak or wrangle an escape pod for yourself and launch into open space, this necklace would communicate to me your exact coordinates. That is _if_ I felt so inclined to track you down, and not to leave you adrift forever on the void, or vulnerable to being picked up by someone loyal to the Supreme Leader."

"Or perhaps I'd been picked up by the Resistance."

Kylo nearly bit his tongue. She had not, previous to now, indicated any knowledge of his mother's ragged band of Republic-sanctioned freedom fighters. Exactly how much did she know of the military struggles in and for the galaxy? Could she have previously had some contact with the Resistance? But he did not have time to puzzle through this recent development. The pressure of his palm flat against her back indicated for her to board the shuttle, and she complied with no further resistance.


	4. Mustafar

Rey was reconsidering killing the man rather than marrying him. He'd swept her along the ice-cold corridors of the ship, passing personnel and droids alike, in a covering with the insular warmth of a breeze and then proceeded to threaten her. Her animal hindbrain wanted to defy him, but she bore down on it and feigned compliance.

Remember, Rey. The object is to _stay alive_. Like it's always been. Your circumstances have changed a little, that's all.

The shuttle itself appeared black and winged like its master, giving Rey the feeling of being clutched to the bosom of a beast as she boarded. Lord Ren took the pilot's seat, one of the masked warriors -- she heard him answer to the name Ushar -- directed Rey into one of the paired seats directly behind. When she didn't respond, Jannah made a mollifying gesture to the creature and gently steered Rey into the seat, strapping her in. 

"Lord Ren is an excellent pilot, but jumping to lightspeed could be bumpy. Best we're secured." 

Rey let her click the harness in place, skimming over the thin fabric of the medical gown (for which Rey felt entirely justified in her defiance of the Lord Ren lookalike) and followed her with her gaze as she took the seat next to her. The black warriors took the pair of seats directly behind them.

The Lord Ren was indeed a skilled pilot. Rey had spent enough time tinkering with abandoned junk left in the wake of the rebellion to recognise that his knowledge superseded hers by far. And the ship responded to his command less as an instrument, more as extension of himself. They transitioned to lightspeed with hardly a ripple. When Ren adjusted its settings and swung around in his seat, he told Jannah to take Rey into the internal passenger compartment to find some clothing for her, and something to eat.

Rey was relieved to shun the presence of those masked ghouls. Once within the sheltered interior, Jannah took off her own mask (at Rey’s insistence), and helped Rey to wrench off the lids of some standard First Order crates. Within were several standard emergency supplies, including clothing, medicines, and provisions. Rey chose a plain but warm-looking top and bottom, a pair of socks, and some close-toed slippers with soft soles that could be shortened around the heel to keep from slipping off.

"Who are those ... people?" She settled on the last word rather than something more insulting. For the same reason, she spoke in a low voice, in case sound in an Upsilon class shuttle had the tendency to travel.

Jannah placed a bacta patch on the puncture in Rey’s arm. "Do you mean the Knights of Ren?"

Rey stamped the toe of her shoe, wedging her foot deeper inside so she could tighten the strap. "They're named for him?"

"On the contrary, I believe each Knight, as well as their master, takes the honorific 'Ren,' to show their commitment to its Code and way of life."

"The Sith?"

Jannah shook her head. "They are not Sith, though they are loyal to the Sith cause, its ways, and its masters. Beyond that, I don't know much. It is not information deemed necessary for an ordinary footsoldier."

Rey found a container of some dried powdery substance and braved a taste. Not bad.

"I believe you're supposed to add water to it, my Lady."

"Oh. Yes. It's like a portion of polystartch bread."

Jannah's mouth conceded a smile. "Forgive me, my Lady, but you're not exactly what I expected when I was told I was to wait on Lord Ren's bride."

Rey sat on a sealed crate and continued to lick powder from off her moistened fingertip. "It's just Rey. And -- _I_ don't even know if I'm what Lord Ren expected."

Jannah’s puzzlement worked its way out in her expressive features; the large eyes, the full, shaped lips.

"He believes me to be something I'm not. Or at least, more than I am.”

***

Kylo's anxiety was somewhat assuaged by putting distance between himself and his Star Destroyer. Still, there would be a point at which they'd be passing the Supremacy, closer to it than either Endor or Mustafar, and he needed to meditate, or otherwise focus on keeping his mental barrier firm, without raising alarm. He retreated into an unoccupied part of his craft, after giving Ushar and Vicrul Ren command of the cockpit. In the privacy of a small storage room, he sat, and removed his helmet. The bare air on his skin felt clammy, and he put his hand up to the feel along his jaw and cheekbone, as if to convince himself they were still there. He rarely removed the mask, except during sleep. His mother used to say that his eyes gave away everything about him -- soulful and expressive, she called them, kissing the tops of his protruding ears. Like your father's.

This was not a desirable path of thought to pursue. Kylo wanted to stabilise his mind, not derail it. So he dipped into the shallow waters of unconsciousness and skimmed its surface. Something moved there; rather than alarm, it intrigued. He swam a little further and saw planes of iridescent shimmering, like the patterns left on sand by waves at the shore. It was the girl, he knew. This was the remnant of what she left with him, when he bore into her and she shoved him back. He glided his hand -- or rather, his mind, but he saw it as an extension of his body -- along the tremulous light. It did not flinch away, and Kylo realised she must be sleeping again. Like the first time, he was able to study her without resistance. This second time, however, he had no direct purpose driving him, only a robust curiosity. The first time he'd nearly drowned in the deep and throbbing depth of her, full to the brim with pain and fight. He had fought his way out again, well accustomed to that type of mental turbulence. Now he wanted to explore other parts of her. 

But as he shifted to dive further in, he recalled how the knowledge of his previous transgression enraged her -- and how their last encounter of the kind had ended on a rather hopeful note, coming, as it did, immediately before the acceptance of his proposal. 

So Kylo drew off. He gave her sleeping consciousness a parting stroke, as though to tuck her in, and left her.

***

Lightspeed brought them to Mustafar in very little time. 

Rey lay down and slept in a cramped bunk, but suspected she only managed to doze off because Jannah hovered near. 

The stormtrooper couldn't have been much older than Rey. Rey wondered if she had been born into the First Order or stolen away. Rumors spread in the Outer Rim, getting as far core-ward as Jakku, that the Order abducted children and conditioned them to be mindless pawns for the glory of the Supreme Leader. But Jannah did not appear mindless. Just rather drawn, reserved. As one would expect someone to be, who had been taught she was no more than a cog in a war machine.

Rey's sleep was so fretful and shallow. At one point, she mistook Jannah’s figure for that of the death-shrouded Ren. She hadn't even been aware of it until Jannah gently roused her. They were nearing Mustafar and Lord Ren was bringing the ship in to land; he insisted on all bodies being secured for planetfall.

When Rey made her way to the cockpit, now more satisfactorily clothed, a rosy incandescence drew her toward the porthole. Hanging in the velvet black of space, and growing ever larger, Rey saw a globe of cracked black soot and pustules of lava. For a moment she feared they'd have nowhere to land. But she consoled herself with the knowledge that Lord Ren seemed to know what he was doing. And the planet must be populated -- hadn't he spoken of a resident cult there?

They landed without incident; Rey saw as they drifted closer that Lord Ren guided the craft toward a black, narrow outcropping of rock, an island in the lava. Close, and the island became a building, which rose upon their descent into a brooding fortress, suspended by some infernal technology over burbling lava fields. It looked, to Rey, as though the planet had been poorly treated, lacerated and bleeding. For all she wished desperately to leave Jakku over the years, she had never dreamed she’d miss it so much as she did in the past few solar cycles.

Her apprehension must have worked its way out, because Jannah brushed her elbow and said, "Don't worry. The air is perfectly safe to breathe."

"Have you been here before?"

"No. But Mustafar was a fortified enclave during the Imperial Era." Rey lingered over her reply, imagining the kind of upbringing that would make the answer a satisfactory one to Jannah.

The shuttle landed. The passengers unclipped their harnesses and stood. The ramp of the shuttle descended with a hiss and a pump. The two Knights went ahead.

As they lingered at the exit, Kylo asked Jannah sharply why she wasn’t wearing her helmet; she apologised, telling that Rey bid her remove it, and turned to return to the passenger space to retrieve it. 

Kylo spread a gloved hand to halt her. “Leave it off then. You are to do whatever Lady Rey says.” 

“It’s just Rey,” Rey muttered in the background. Never had she felt so exactly like an important piece of furniture: central to the scenes playing out around her but otherwise, and in the practical sense, ignored.

Jannah followed the Knights down the ramp and across the landing platform. But Lord Ren turned to Rey. She thought he would comment on her change of attire, but he merely stared at her shoes for a moment, then jerked his head toward the exit. Rey followed the indication of his mask to the dark landing platform, awash in a red glow. Beyond the fortress walls climbed the soot-clogged sky, as if the planet itself were reaching up to claw at its prison.

"Darth Vader's castle," Lord Ren said. "It came into my possession a while ago. You could say, I inherited it."

Rey willed the distaste not to manifest plainly on her features. "I thought you said we would be wed at a temple."

"The temple is here. The cult of Alazmac colonists has collected and brought together relics, the chief of which is the castle itself. Lord Vader built it on the site of an ancient Sith temple. Most of it is in ruins, but some of it is still habitable. There is a cave with a lava lake beneath. The cultists serve me, as of yet. I've no reason to remove them."

Even as he spoke, a group of ragged, yellow-eyed humanoid creatures approached, with a kind of shuffling deference that made Rey feel sick. She could not tell if the textured dome atop their heads was a helmet or an extension of the creatures themselves. They were swathed so in gray skins and brown, rough fabric that she couldn’t see below the protruding, mechanical yellow eyes into the empty darkness.

"There is speculation among the adepts of the cult that I am Vader come again." His voice was sterile and unassuming, his mask swivelling to her. "As such, you would be the considered reincarnation of his wife."

"Charming." Rey hadn't meant to say that out loud.

But Lord Ren laughed. A kind of stiff, inorganic sound through the filter of his mask. Then he took her arm and folded it into his. Rey did not have a chance to start or complain. Because linked with her thus, Lord Ren steered her down the loading ramp and onto the landing platform, into the smouldering, inhospitable heat, crossing to the imposing fortress. He did not release her until they stepped into the tall, gaping doorway, like the mouth of a cavern.

Inside, the fortress was cooler by tens of degrees. It was almost cold. Not the same cold of sterile space, but the protected cold of some native rock that repelled heat, ideal for insulating the local flora and fauna from damage by stray, spurting lava. The corridors were of indiscernible height, for when Rey looked up, all she saw was darkness. The walls and floor were made of the same black, slate-like stone, and the place was mostly empty of furniture and accents of any kind. Yellow globes like glow worms, the exact color of the cultists' eyes, punctuated the gloom along the walls. Their company followed the maze of hallways and treacherous steps, which seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere. Eventually the cavern-castle gave way to more deliberate infrastructure: reinforced walls of durasteel, average ceilings, and standard lighting. They had entered the habitable part of the ruins.

In one of the alcoves of the labyrinthine place, a group of cultists awaited them. Lord Ren selected one of them, and ushered Rey toward it. “Take my bride-to-be to the Red Room," he instructed the silent Alazmac. Then to Jannah: "We did not have time to take measurements, but there is something of my grandmother's there which may fit. And," he seemed to add as an afterthought to a third Alazmac attendant, "have the piping from the underground hot springs turned to full power, so she can bathe."

***

The room was indeed red, though it was hard to tell how much of it was in the colour of its furnishings and how much was in the glow that stained every nook and crevice. It was spacious, with the high ceiling customary to that place, if not so high that it could not be seen -- Rey caught a glimpse of something shimmering and thought that once there must have been a mosaic, but the dust and smoke had choked the ceiling until it was unreadable. The floor and furniture however were clean, if old, and the linens draping the large, round bed looked freshly made. 

The room was reached by a mechanical elevator, and its large window gave Rey and Jannah an unobscured view of the churning landscape. The window opened onto the further side of the castle, opposite of the one they'd landed on; and a carpet of black-trunked trees unrolled from its feet and petered out to a grey haze the distance. Rey had never seen trees before; she always imagined they'd be much greener.

As she and Jannah looked out over the perpetual dusk of that smoky planet, several silent attendants moved in and out, disappearing into a door in one side of the wall. Their lack of talk made them eerie, and Rey wondered if they spoke in some inaudible language, or whether or not a vow of silence was part of their religion. There came a series of bangs and squeaks, and then the sound of something divine -- Rey couldn't name it. It was a rushing, wet sound, and it called her with a music she swore she'd only ever heard before in dreams. She passed the attendants as they shuffled out, bowing and swaying, and Rey gave a little absent nod in turn. Inside the door was a small room, with facilities she didn't grasp the use for. But the music that called her almost sent her into throes of pleasure.

Water.

So. Much. _Water_.

Water just pouring out of a hole in the wall, into a black iron basin large enough to fit a loth-wolf in. It filled rapidly, and Rey shoved her hands into the bath without bothering to fold up her sleeves. She'd never felt nor seen so much water in her entire life.

"Jannah, look! Come quick, look at this!"

The stormtrooper was at the door with her hand to the blaster in her belt. "What is it?" Her eyes scanned the perimeter, then fell on Rey whose grin widened with every passing moment. "Look at all the water!"

Jannah dropped her hand from her belt and took a step into the room. "It's a bath. It's quite full already. Would you like me to shut it off for you, Lady Rey?" She reached over and turned a dull handle.

"A bath?" Rey's eyes rounded out like moons. "We’re meant to _go in it_?"

Jannah nodded. "It's got just the trace of a sulphurous smell, but other than that, I believe it's quite fresh. Probably pumped up from some underground springs. The lava heats the water shed, you see. Are you used to sonic showers?"

But Rey was peeling off her shirt and trousers, and kicking off the tightened slippers. She considered trying to pry at the silvery ring at her throat, but judged it fruitless in the end. If it broke because of the water, so be it. Every muscle of her body tuned to the music of that liquid luxury. "Aren't you coming in?" she asked, incredulity raising her voice.

Jannah's mouth tilted into a smile. "That's all right, my Lady." And then, because a lone housekeeping droid prattled in to pinch up Rey's discarded clothes, she side-stepped out of the room and put her head back in through the door. "There is a wardrobe here that looks fresher than the rest of the furniture, like it has recently been brought in. Lord Ren said he’d chosen something for you to wear, so I’ll fish it out for you. If you need me for anything, just call."

Rey lowered herself in the warm water with an audible hiss and a queer unspooling of muscles which was totally alien to her.


	5. The Wedding Dress

Rey soaked in the water until she felt bloated and raw. Usually she bathed with a bit of water and a rag. So the feeling of being waterlogged was novel to her. 

After soaking until her fingers wrinkled, she explored some of the pumps, bottles, and scented bars on the shelf over the mouth of the water faucet, and determined that any one of them could be used for washing her hair. Rey liked being clean; she took pride in her clothing and her hygiene. She wore her hair in the three neat buns running down the back of her head because it was how she always wore them -- but also because it kept it from tangling and collecting more sand than it already did. She'd often considered what it would be like to wake up one day and not have to deal with the endless, grating sand. 

When she finished lathering and scrubbing, Rey fell back into the tub and let the water close over her. When she emerged again it was with a choked sob.

_How_ did this happen? Why _her_? What poor hand in the cosmic game of sabacc had been dealt her? And had she been playing all along?

She missed home, she missed knowing what was coming, missed the comfort of familiar places and little, common inconveniences. Now all of a sudden she was being taken care of. Carted along like a broken droid, or one of the colourful, squawking birds sold by merchants in Niima marketplace: only where the birds wore the ring of their captivity around a clawed ankle, hers was about her neck. 

Things could be worse, she reasoned. She could be beaten, starved, exposed to hard labour. But there was an element of autonomy to the rest which was distinctly lacking in her current situation. Because she had lived through all those other scenarios, in one form or another. This was something else entirely. She wondered about Lord Ren. What did he expect of her, as a wife, and as an apprentice? She'd only just begun to touch the surface of understanding when it came to the Force. And any thoughts of marriage had been distant, castles in the air one dreams up when one wishes to escape. Her true desire had always been for her parents. Though, rarely, a little girl in dire circumstances could entertain a fancy about a prince.

Now she was going to enter into a marriage with a stranger in a mask, for whom the height of success was murdering his own mentor. 

Rey did not know she had been crying; not until Jannah came through the doorway and knelt by the rim of the bath. "My Lady? What is it? What's the matter?"

Rey just shook her head and let her tears merge with the cooling bath water.

***

TZ-1719 was a good soldier. She followed orders. She excelled in her training, both in combat and the propagation of First Order tenants on colonised worlds. She was a _brain_ ; the unofficial term coined to indicate the soldiers sent in after the boots on the ground, when the bloody bits of conquest were complete, and they needed more nuance and critical thinking. She didn't fraternise with the other troopers, even when they made it abundantly clear that they wished to initiate a physical relationship with her. She knew that behind her back they called her frigid and aloof. It wasn't that she scorned them, or thought herself better, or that friendship of any kind could be a weakness to her. It was rather that she couldn't bring herself to care.

For as far back as she could remember, it had always been _only her_. She supposed she had parents somewhere. She'd heard of the clone armies of generations past, but she knew the process to be costly and time-intensive. Easier for the First Order to take children who were already walking and talking, and program them to suit their needs. Besides, she had never run into any copies of herself walking around, and her career spanned several Star Destroyers and assignments planetside. TZ-1719 supposed she should feel resentment toward the First Order for taking her away and making it hers. But the truth was, she didn't feel any sort of way at all. It was all she knew.

If one is nurtured, so to speak, in an environment that does not expect nor from which things are expected, one quickly learns not to seek affirmation in the other. She was her own person. She did what she did because … what else was there?

When the Lady Rey began to cry, TZ-1719 went into her because it was the right thing to do. If she got too upset, it would affect her biological readings, and the bio-collar would alert Lord Ren, and TZ would have failed at her caretaking assignment. So she went in to see what she could do to help. 

What she wasn't prepared for was to feel the uninvited stirrings of sympathy. The girl looked so small, huddled in the spent bath like a drowned rat. Younger than herself, surely. And she was all chaos and unpredictability, unlike the comrades on the Star Destroyer, where TZ could judge after a few minutes in a newcomer's company whether he was going to be worth the effort it took to socialise. Rey’s preoccupation with TZ-1719's mask took an odd form. She wanted her out of it. She did queer things: like try to eat powdered rations without adding water; ask her questions about her thoughts and feelings at the events unfolding around them; and inviting her into her bath. The strangest of all, perhaps, was giving her the name: Jannah. TZ had been a child once, even that human weakness had not escaped her, and every child plays pretend. It was the name she chose for herself when she (and sometimes one or two companions in her harvest year) pretended to be something other than what she was. In truth, she had never been very fond of pretending.

Now TZ-1719 helped the Lady Rey out of her bath, wrapping a voluminous towel around her. They were the same height, and as TZ towelled off the younger woman, she could, for the first time, imagine the shock and displacement Rey must be feeling. TZ had her orders, her duty. She knew how to keep moving forward. But Lady Rey had been taken, lifted long after the age for harvesting children to the cause, and was no doubt balancing emotions of disorientation, confusion, and betrayal. The brains were taught how to recognise such trauma when they went into a new-conquered star system and began to implement changes. It was natural but undesirable. Smooth adjustment to the new regime yielded better results.

"Here you are, my Lady." 

She steered her mistress into the larger room, where she laid out the old but well-kept garment she found hanging in the wardrobe. Diaphanous fabric, layered and draped, gathered together at the neckline with a silver collar. The sleeves trailed long, detached from the body of the gown but for a swatch of fabric knotted in the front skirt. The gown itself was unfitted, except for a few stitches on the outside of the sleeves and where it gathered to the collar. It was a good choice because it was likely to fit, regardless of size. The entire gown was awash in a gradient transitioning from pale yellow, to petal pink, to lavender. It was like a painting, or a picture on the holonet TZ had seen once of a sunset on Naboo.

Rey eyed the dress spilling over the bed and gave TZ-1719 a worried look. "It ... looks like a tent."

"I'll help you into it."

Rey adjusted the towel around her shoulders.

"Forgive me for rushing you, my Lady, but Lord Ren sent in an attendant while you bathed to hurry us along. He requires your presence outside the Vader temple in two hours."

Rey went rod-straight. Suddenly, TZ had a vision of her, not the soft thing she attended in the bath, but a woman of means, a woman sought, someone of _fight_. "You mean -- we're getting married _right now_?"

"Lord Ren is eager to solidify your union." TZ started to lift the dress and part the folds to find the best way to put it over the Lady Rey. Head first. Ah, the collar, that would need adjusting. And here’s an arm...

Rey jerked her arm through a limp sleeve. "I don't see why he’s in such a rush. I'm not going anywhere." She gave an insolent tug to the ring around her neck.

TZ shooed her fingers away and readjusted it so that it sat smoothly underneath the dress’s collar. "It's less you, my Lady, and more the Supreme Leader."

"Where do you fall in all this, Jannah? Don't you worry about the repercussions of treason?" Suddenly, Rey gripped her arm with increasing dread. "Will you be punished?"

"Not likely, my Lady. You have to understand the Sith way, and how it functions in the First Order. The First Order itself is not Sith, but is allied closely with its principles. If I am acting under the command of a superior outside the Order, I can't be accused of insubordination within it. It's a loophole, the kind of loophole the Sith thrive on exploiting. I remember learning in my ancient religions module, about the primary difference between the Sith and the Jedi. The Jedi have rules they pretend to follow. The Sith have rules they anticipate will be broken."

"Why even have rules, then?"

"To separate the elect from the unworthy. In the Sith philosophy, anything is admissible if one can get away with it."

***

Rey understood why Jannah had been chosen to accompany her and stay near her side. She was incredibly knowledgeable of the workings of the galaxy, both within and without the First Order, and her reflective eyes concealed a cache of intelligence waiting to be mined. Rey had no doubt the stormtrooper would have thrived on Jakku. Perhaps, they would even have been friends. Rey’s pulse fluttered -- but it was a momentary reprieve from the leaden anticipation weighing on her.

Jannah proved even more invaluable in the daunting task of getting dressed. Without her, Rey wouldn't have known where to put her head or her arms, and she certainly wouldn't have been able to adjust the silver collar just so around her clavicle so that it did not press or irritate the bio-collar her bridegroom insisted she wear.

Rey moved to knot her hair, quite dry already, in its customary buns, but Jannah halted her with a quiet, "Leave it down."

Rey's hands hovered over her head for a moment longer, but she softened to the thoughtfulness in the stormtrooper's voice and lowered them.

"How do I look?"

Jannah leaned back a little, to give her better perspective. Then she nodded to herself. "Good. You look like a queen."

Rey blushed and looked down at herself, partly to hide her embarrassment and partly to catch a glimpse of what it was that made Jannah say such an absurd thing. She smoothed the succulent fabric. It caressed her skin as the water had, only cooler and drier. She felt strange without fabric between her legs, and it was a bit clumsy to have to mind the hem of the gown when she moved. But Rey didn't _hate_ it.

"Where did he get something like this? It doesn't seem like the kind of thing Lord Ren would have stored away for emergency weddings."

Jannah laughed, and Rey's eyes darted up, catching her mirth like wildfire.

Jannah said, "The original master of this fortress -- Darth Vader -- was a Sith Lord apprenticed to the Emperor. Before then, though, he was married. He had a wife. This was her dress."

Rey’s internal fog cleared. "I remember. He said something to me about her, about the cultists believing us reincarnations of Lord and Lady Vader."

"She was never Lady Vader," Jannah said, turning Rey around to make some adjustments with how the layers fell from the back of her waist. "She died in childbirth."

Rey's voice slipped on a whisper. "How. _Tragic_."

Jannah hummed.

Rey tugged at her skirts and pointed her bare toes together. "It's a bit short. I've no shoes suitable for it. Do you think, will Lord Ren mind if I go barefooted?"

Jannah shook her head. "You must wear shoes. There is open flame, and lava, in the reconstructed Sith temple. You'll simply have to wear the adjustable slippers."

***

Kylo Ren knelt before the infernal altar, an obsidian and metal casket which now housed two relics: a holocron of indiscernible purpose, and the half-melted mask of Kylo's grandfather Darth Vader. 

He knelt, supplicating the voice of his grandfather to speak to him, but in his mind all was silent. It was no small thing for Kylo to relinquish control of the Vader relic he possessed. He had found it among the possessions of his uncle, in the aftermath of the Jedi temple’s destruction. Through it, he had found the voice of one who knew him, the way his family never did, or refused to. His grandfather had come to him in his suffering and offered comfort. He told Kylo things no one but Vader could have known. And he told him who he was -- that he was Kylo's very own grandfather, the father of his mother and uncle, the famed Jedi Anakin Skywalker.

_Go to them_ , the voice had said. _Ask them if it's true. They cannot deny it. But know this: they will say that I turned before the end. Lies breed for them, like fleas on the hide of a beast_.

The voice of his grandfather was there to keep him company when Snoke grew cold. But as Kylo drew away from his master, the voice of Vader became harder and harder to hear, thin and distant. Now, he knelt before the ruined mask, begging for a word. For guidance.

Behind him the great claw-footed brazier crackled, its red and blue flames hissing on the unburning coal that never goes out. Most of the original facets of the Sith temple were destroyed or pillaged in the Mustafarian uprising and subsequent lava storm (Darth Vader had made a quick end to them). But a few sinister, featureless obelisks hulked, in the vague shapes of humanoid bodies, five times the size of a normal man. Draped folds and receding hoods of what were once cloaks could still be discerned from black stone. On one Sith idol, the remnant of a broken horn protruded from beneath a hood. From high above the altar, in the back of the apse, lava pooled through the open mouth of a horror long extinct, some ancestor to the lava flea, immortalised in stone. The stream of magma mesmerised on its way down, collecting into a pool, which then filtered into a channel flowing beneath the casket-altar. The channel poured into a ceremonial grate directly beneath the Sacred Fire. Kylo was made to believe that occasional sacrifices were offered here, of victims willing or unwilling. It was a brutal practice but one which he had little power to regulate if it couldn’t first be confirmed. Perhaps it was that, perhaps the strangled, unholy scraps of consciousness of the great Sith artist Momin, clinging to this life. There was something about the heat in that reclaimed temple that was used-up, unnatural. It made his skin clammy beneath his mask.

Kylo had changed from his robes into something clean and streamlined: a black doublet and high-waisted trousers, boots, and a cape clasped to his shoulders. He kept his usual belt and mask. From behind where he knelt, a deep scraping confessed the opening of the high, iron-etched doors, pushed from without, followed by the silent sweep of the robed Alazmac cultists, walking down the center of the temple nave and parting to either side. 

Kylo picked himself up from off the lower step of the altar and turned, hands clasped behind his back, to watch what followed. The high priest of the Alazmac was last to enter. He was in fact no Alazmac, but a white, loose-skinned humanoid of indiscernible gender, perfectly hairless, red of tooth and eye. The androgyne’s robes were also red, similar in drape and cut to those the stone Sith lords still feigned to wear.

The high priest bowed to Kylo; Kylo bent at the waist but only just. Then the priest walked around the altar and opened the casket. The priest pulled the disfigured mask from the inner compartment and placed it on the closed lid of the altar. A voiceless murmur moved through the room. The cultists had come to worship.

Ren's Knights drew up behind him, silent as the cultists and far more deadly; they flanked him, three on either side; last came the girl.

Kylo felt her before he saw her. She was not loud, not intrusive; but she was not of that place; and as such, she seemed to roar out in the heat and gloom, something fresh and teeming, against the backdrop of barren death. 

It was strange to him, in that moment, that he had brought her here to be wed. It presented itself to him as inappropriate, somehow; and slighting. The stormtrooper stood behind her, anchoring her, though she was no taller or broader than Rey. Her clean, functional armour contrasted against the pastel floating gown Rey wore that had been Kylo's grandmother's. From holos he had seen in his childhood, Kylo recalled a sad, beautiful woman, dewy with youth, with masses of curls, mischievous eyebrows, and his mother's enigmatic smile. Padme wore her gowns like royalty, with ease and purpose. His mother was the same. Rey was not of the same stock. She was wild and a little rough. But it was the roughness of a raw jewel, just as beautiful as the glass-cut gem, when set in precious metal. She wore it well.

He sensed her trepidation, tingling along the line of their residual connection, though she walked without faltering and kept her eyes forward. As much the brave, spitting sand rat his Knights cornered in the desert; no civilising robes could conceal that nature. The silence in the temple thickened each step she drew nearer, until she faced him, and Kylo swore he could hear the tension vibrating, the taut red string tying them together, even now losing slack. Her eyes locked his -- an impressive feat, considering she could only guess where his looked through the barrier of his mask -- and he beheld a passing sense of the tables having turned; of his not being in control at all, but of being the one entrapped; deliberately tangled in the lapping, shimmering lights he had sought to hold but which held him instead. 

Then the loud, foreign word of the high priest ruptured the illusion. She was a scavenger, and he was Lord of the Knights of Ren, and he would make her something great. They turned toward the high priest, who began to drone in the ancient Sith tongue, the meaning of which Kylo could only glimpse here and there. The rest was as inscrutable as his gaze behind the black mask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr readers voted for Rey to wear Padme's "sunset dress" from Attack of the Clones. Thanks a heap to those of you who comment and keep on commenting, it's fuelling my streak of inspiration.


	6. The Wedding Night

Hundreds of yellow-eyed cultists kept silent, sullen watch. Yet the Sith temple climbed so vast and so vaulted, it felt sparse and echoey, even with the glut of bodies. Every fell syllable spoken by the white-and-red horror at the altar rang in Rey's skull. 

Jannah was good. Before the ceremony, she fetched Rey something to eat to settle her stomach, and brought her a damp towel to wash her face when Rey inevitably threw up. She spoke sharply to the attendant -- one of the few who was not a mute Alazmac -- not to rush Rey, and then coaxed her out of the Red Room and into the suffocating dark corridors, letting the attendant lead on, but never further than a step behind. Rey didn't know what she would have done if it hadn't been for Jannah. Jannah's composed and natural face, the only human thing that looked upon her in that infernal place.

Rey didn't know why her empty stomach clenched with hurt when she beheld Lord Ren still in his mask. She supposed this was a fitting indication of their clandestine union, the symbol of their estranged and formal agreement. They were strangers, brought together for a common purpose, a mutual benefit. Rey had not dreamt, as she heard some girls did, of the day of her wedding, and for that she was grateful. She could not imagine the bitterness of having to compare the whimsical fantasy of a child to this stale reality.

The cursory fingers of Ren’s consciousness felt for her when she entered but retreated and were blessedly absent for the remainder of the wedding.

The ceremony involved some kneeling, some chanting. Lord Ren did not touch or move to look at her throughout. At what appeared to be the climax of the proceedings, the decayed-looking priest climbed down from the obsidian altar, carrying a treacherous pair of tongs. He, she, it -- whatever it was, lifted one of the white-hot coals from the brazier of flame at the foot of the altar, and approached them.

As the priest glided, as though in trance, a movement from Lord Ren seized Rey’s attention. His fingers tugged at one of his tight black gloves, until she looked upon the bare skin of the man she married for the second time. A snaking soreness reared in the pit of her stomach. Ren put out his cupped hand; the priest spoke in the terrible language and dropped the coal into Ren's palm.

Rey strangled a gasp. 

There was nary a murmur from another soul in the entire edifice, not even Lord Ren. She watched, her face contorting to the surrogacy of his pain; the coal burned away on the large palm and Ren neither moved nor dropped the coal. It could not have been as long as it seemed, for when the priest retrieved the glowing coal with the tongs, Ren's skin looked bubbled and raw, but not maimed utterly. Lord Ren replaced the glove; his easing into the leather the only indication he'd been injured. Then the priest exchanged a word with him in low tones. Without looking, the creature made a motion toward Rey, whose heart beat like the wings of a bird, though her feet remained soldered to the floor. Ren's mask jerked toward Rey. His hand swept over her, making a sign in the air, as though wiping a slate or bidding farewell. But then, he removed the glove from his uninjured hand and held it upward in offering. The priest did not hesitate, but dropped the same coal into the fresh palm. The ritual repeated, so that neither hand of the Lord Ren came away unscathed. Then the priest returned the coal to the brazier and remounted the altar.

Rey felt the needling contraction warning of tears in her head. Jannah had told Rey she did not understand how the Sith religion worked within the First Order; and this was suddenly manifest to her in the most savage way. But she swallowed the pain in her throat and tried to keep her wavering vision, the treacherous closeness of that wide open cathedral, from casting her down to the floor in a dead faint. If only she'd managed to keep some food down.

At last, the priest raised draped arms in a kind of benediction, and there was a sweep of voiceless praise rising from the crowd of witnesses. The Knights of Ren circled around behind Rey and Ren, as Rey's new husband adjusted her with the barest touch to her arm. She responded like an automaton. The adoring, silent cultists were to Rey more depraved than if they had descended into carnage and chaos. Lord Ren glided her along the center of the nave, until they exited through the heavy iron doors into the cavernous wing of Fortress Vader.

He halted her just outside, and Rey half-turned to him, expecting -- what, exactly? She searched for words but language eluded her. The mask of her husband was blank and pitiless. She could not even tell if he looked at her, much less if he looked upon her with tenderness or esteem. Rather, he seemed all too eager to move things along, as he summoned Jannah, appearing on the heels of the Knights, and told her to take Rey back to the Red Room and remain there with her, awaiting further instructions.

***

Kylo had gone over different scenarios with his Knights. It was only a matter of time before the Supreme Leader intercepted the Star Destroyer Kylo was supposedly on, awaiting his master with the scavenger. When Snoke discovered them missing, he would attempt to contact Kylo. Then he would either summon him or come to him directly. They'd had no word so far, and Kylo guessed that his ship was just coming out of the magnetic storm that silenced their comms. He had given orders for himself and his retinue not to be disturbed, but eventually some meddling officer would get anxious and look for him. The fewer people that knew of Kylo’s intentions, the better. It would all be out soon enough. Hux had said they would attempt to contact Kylo after the expected radio silence, but if Kylo could not be reached, it would not rouse immediate suspicion. Kylo was not known for pristine obedience and glad cooperation.

The ceremony had gone just as well as he could have expected. The high priest accepted Kylo's offering of both hands, in replacement for the palm of his bride, who knew nothing of the ways of the Sith and their worship of pain. He wasn't sure what he would have done if the priest hadn't accepted a proxy; he didn't want Rey hurt, but he _needed_ the marriage to be valid.

Kylo took two of his Knights and ascended to the nerve center of the fortress at the top and east of the spit tower; there they scanned the area surrounding Mustafar for any activity and then further afield, to see if they could pick up any disturbances or wayward crafts. Everything was calm. 

Thus far, Kylo had avoided thinking in terms of an overarching plan. It wasn't exactly in his nature to be methodical and calculating. Passion drove him, and anger. So he focused on desire, on each step that took him nearer to what he wanted; leaping from one impossible situation to another, he didn't bother thinking beyond the goal of his immediate success. 

Snoke was not coming, but he would be. And when he did, Kylo would have to be ready. His marriage to the scavenger must be impervious to challenge.

Ordinarly, Kylo would not accept bacta on a ritualistic wound. But to accomplish the final stage in securing the scavenger for himself, he would need the full use of his hands.

***

Most of his life, Kylo could not occupy a state of mind where sex appealed to him, in a way that was more than mere academic curiosity. It seemed dangerous, vulnerable, intimate in a way that he was not prepared to be. It wasn't that he hadn't had offers. Once or twice, going back to his academy days, he'd been approached; but then a prod from Snoke reminded him that everything he was, everything he had, was shared. He'd been young then and had since become more adept at compartmentalising parts of himself. He could guard certain trains of thought from Snoke, store information away in his mind, and he prepared to exercise the muscles of that skill now, as he went into Rey as night shrouded Mustafar.

He had sent an attendant in ahead of him so she could expect him. The stormtrooper was removed to nearby quarters, and the Red Room was dressed with swathes of fuligin, the colour darker than black, to soak up every scrap of light. To look at fuligan was to look into the absence of light. The only thing blacker in the galaxy was a black hole.

Kylo didn't _particularly_ want Rey, in the way a husband wants his wife; though she was attractive in a kind of boyish, under-nourished fashion. The features of her face were symmetrical and pleasing, and her skin retained the memory of the Jakku suns in its bronze warmth. The knots of her hair made her look downright juvenile, but she had the parts of a fully grown woman, from what he could tell. And he was aware that an unconsummated marriage was a liability. It would put them at risk should it come to light.

Removing his mask before the girl-turned-wife did not appeal to him, and he considered going in to her fully clothed. It was tempting to keep himself covered, the natural reaction of one about to surrender his last fortifications of privacy -- but he recalled the tightening fear whenever he moved toward her with his mask fulgurating. It was designed to intimidate, which was not in and of itself a problem for a master-apprentice relationship. But for a husband and wife?

So Kylo contrived a way for the chamber to remain completely dark with the fuligin trappings. He knew the room and its furnishing well enough to get around from previous stays in Fortress Vader. It should be little trouble for him to grope his way to the bed and do what must be done.

Kylo entered, swift and silent, closing the door before any light could fall in and illuminate the absolute dark. He found his bride, as he expected, huddled in the center of the expansive bed, by feeling for her. Though she must have heard him enter -- and at his tread, never light, magnified by the darkness -- she flinched when his groping hands ran into her.

"It's me," he spoke, though what kind of comfort that was supposed to bring, he did not know.

He sunk his knee into the bed and put his hands out again, finding her bare arms and shoulders. He gripped these and adjusted her, while pulling himself toward the center where she sat.

When she spoke, he could hear the nearness of tears, as of the lining of a pitcher full to the brim. "Y-you sound different."

"I'm not wearing my mask."

Confusion and distress radiated from her. And then a brief respite of curiosity. To his surprise, a hand came feeling upward, starting from his clavicle, creeping up his neck, and settling on his jaw. He let her fingers walk over the long, broad planes of his face; fingers adept from a lifetime of tinkering with scavenged parts, and roughed from the very same. It felt indulgent, wrong, to let someone touch his face, the mask of his soul. The last person to caress him here was his mother -- and the power she wielded to hurt him was profound and intolerable. He wanted to lean away, to take Rey’s hand and place it firmly at her side and away from him. But he was wary of doing anything that would startle her further. She traced the ridge and valleys of his cheekbones, the bridge of his pronounced nose and brow, wavered briefly at the soft, shapeless mouth. He wondered what she saw, what her fingers read there. _Ugly_ , he thought.

"You don't ... feel like a monster."

He cocked his head toward her voice in the dark. "I am," he assured her. "I am not a good man."

A shuddered breath. "Are you going to hurt me?"

The question impaled him, beyond reason. "No." The answer was a known thing. He hadn't spoken it, only found it in the air. "No, I won't hurt you."

For a moment, he considered leaving. She was distressed, and while the Sith thrived on pain and chaos, Kylo never had -- nor did he ever wish to have -- the desire to rape a woman. He put his feelers out to her in the Force, in a gesture imitative of one offering a passive hand to a wary animal. She did not open to him. But neither did she shy away.

He felt her move, and she seemed to be lifting off the garment she wore, and put her fingers to unwork the knotted sash of his own robe.

The mechanics proved more troublesome than he could have guessed, especially in utter darkness. He was grateful for Rey's cooperation in that, or he couldn't have been sure he would have figured it out on his own. She would be, after all, more familiar with her own body than he, a lifelong celibate. The thought prompted him to wonder if she herself knew anything of sex. But a moment later the resistance of her body suggested otherwise. She didn't exactly whimper -- but her discomfort was palpable.

"Should I stop?"

"N-no," she gritted out, and he didn't need to dip into her mind to take the hint: finish quickly and leave her.

It was tempting, in the sightless dark, to jostle her, to bear down on her body and manipulate it in whatever way he needed to achieve completion. But he said he wouldn’t hurt her; and Kylo did _not_ lie. So he stilled, waiting until she initiated, by moving suggestively beneath him.

If he had given thought even to his own pleasure, he might have asked her what she wanted. But Kylo was a split creature. His body acted out of instinct, while the intellectual mind stood back and watched from a safe distance.

When he drew the robe back around his body, and stepped out of the bed onto the cold stone floor, incongruous in that humid place, the full weight of what just passed collapsed on him. He had always been _one_. Himself, alone, even with Snoke squatting in his mind. Their relationship was that of mentor and mentee, master and apprentice, and in the end, though Snoke claimed to be the only one to understand him, it left him feeling more alone. The Knights of Ren were loyal to him but he was their leader; and as leader, he occupied a lofty position, remote from any other than a vague sense of camaraderie. 

Now he had given this scavenger, this _Rey_ , something he had given to no other before her. And it _unsettled_ him. Maybe it was the residual weakness of the moment of climax, the sheer vulnerability of attaching his body to another human being's, but -- there was no walking back from it, he was certain. This was why Jedi and Sith alike forbid attachments. Why marriage was a liability. Why it made a person weak. He could have no way of knowing what the future now held for him. He had her as an apprentice, yes, but also as more. The power inside her was at his disposal, but it went both ways. His power was available to her, if she only had the wherewithal to reach for it. 

Kylo wanted power because he wanted to be rid of the pain. He had tried the other ways, but to no avail. He had been a good Jedi, a dutiful padawan to Luke Skywalker. It couldn't help him in the end. He could never outrun the shadow of his legacy, his uncle's disapproval, his mother's fear. And in the horror that was Darth Vader revealed to him, he found a kindred spirit. Someone to make the loneliness a little more bearable, if not to rid him of it.

As he slipped out of the room under cover of darkness, Kylo was certain of one thing -- Rey was his, and he was hers.

_Fuck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuligin, the colour darker than black, is a sci-fi invention by the peerless Gene Wolfe in his series "Book of the New Sun." 
> 
> Please comment with your reactions!


	7. Consummation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enough people were confused about the last chapter that I tried to be more deliberate in showing Rey's POV of their wedding night. I tried to keep it tasteful, but it may yet be more explicit than what some people are used to. Proceed with caution. And let me know if by the end some of your questions are answered!

Rey woke the next morning when an attendant entered the room to pull down the fuligin trappings. She was a thin woman with too-small eyes, and where she folded the fabric her arms and hands were swallowed by solid absence. When the hazy red drifted in through the window, it brought a gentle memory of the night before.

Rey and Jannah waited long hours after the ceremony; they found more food and the wardrobe restocked with clothing. Rey hauled off the gown, draping it over a chair, and replaced it with simple clothing that gave her the ease of movement she was accustomed to. She encouraged Jannah to change as well, but she declined. Rey supplicated her at least to remove her outer armour, and Jannah did comply with this in the end.

After eating, Rey threw herself onto the bed and asked Jannah to tell her a story. But Jannah's stories were histories, and Rey wanted something to take her away from reality. She told a story instead.

It was one of those fragmented tales that picks up details and nuance according to the time and culture that handles it. Rey could not remember it all, but she recalled the parts that had moved her, even as she could see the travelling storyteller's face, etched in shadows from the firelight; the heightened attention of the shepherds and scavengers, gathered of an evening to forget the woes of the day. It was the story of a maiden who was saved by the god of love; his jealous mother ordered her devoured by a sea monster. The god saw the maiden and loved her. He spirited her away to his palace to make her his wife, visiting her only at night, so that she could not be certain her sentence had not come to pass. Indeed, to the maiden, it seemed a shapeless creature came to her and devoured her nightly in the act of love. Rey never did hear how the story ended. Republic authorities stationed in nearby Niima came the next day and forced the encampment to move along. The New Republic cared little for the sufferings of its citizens on Jakku, until the sufferings turned to small triumphs, and then it was all too eager to step in and regulate.

"Jannah, have you ever ... you know ... coupled, with a man?" Rey leaned against a tower of stiff pillows. But Jannah sat with spine erect on a stiff chair, like a cat prepared to leap at a moment’s notice.

The stormtrooper, fair and steady as ever, answered clean and clear. "I have not. I don't find it a particularly useful activity."

Rey brought her knees to her body and hugged them. "Me neither."

Jannah did not press further, and Rey was content to let the subject drop. That was, until a human attendant, the thin woman, came in and announced that Lord Ren would be visiting her and expected things to be in order. The silent Alazmac carried in gashes of black, that seemed to Rey tears in reality itself. Where it touched their arms and trailed the floor, the presence of all else disappeared. The cultists began to hang the blackness from the hooks over the twilit window, and Rey realized it was fabric.

"You're to be removed to your own quarters," the attendant explained to Jannah.

Jannah nodded and readied herself, approaching her neatly stacked armor in the corner of the room. Rey gripped her arm, and Jannah turned. Jannah's intelligent eyes scanned Rey's face, and, swift enough to have been imagined, she touched Rey's hand on her arm and squeezed.

***

The attendants laid out a garment for Rey to sleep in and told her that the incandescent lamps were timed to shut off, that she should find her way to bed by then. Rey paced the room for a while, then put on a sheath of fabric that, if possible, was even more luxurious than the gown she wed in. But she could not enjoy it. Nervous energy prompted her to try the door more than once, though she knew she would find it unresponsive to her touch. When the lights flickered out -- they gave a series of warning flashes that stippled the room before going completely -- she found her way to the bed and climbed in, holding herself, and waiting. The oppressive black weighed so heavy, so thick and complete, Rey felt she could grasp clumps of it, chew it like fat.

Rey couldn't be sure she heard Lord Ren come in. In the perfect dark, her own breathing clamoured so loud it was hard to separate the inner sounds of her body from those without. But she became aware of _him_. His presence, commanding in any room, cutting the striking figure of a black gash very like the lightless fabric, heightened to unbearable tangibility with primary sense cut out.

He moved across the room, though she felt him everywhere. Onto the bed. He reached for her, and she jumped. His hands were warm, wide; they did not appear to be dressed with bandages.

"It's me," he said, and Rey's throat constricted. The voice was different. Human. Low and absent of static.

"Y-you sound different."

"I'm not wearing my mask."

For a moment, he hovered in her mind's eye, a headless horror, before sense calmed her. Some part of her she had not realised existed felt relief, that he did not intend to carry over the slight of their wedding ceremony. Though practically speaking, it made little difference. He had been as close to her before, but never this undressed. She was aware of him the way she was aware of the flanks of happabores, as she pushed through them to reach water -- the expansive, warm reach of him, with a life of its own, which went on existing, even after it left her particular story. His physicality swallowed everything else, even the dark, until it invaded her senses. 

She needed to touch him. Would he allow it? Even if she received a rebuke, she weighed it worth the risk. The intention was for his body to invade her body. This was a way for her to reclaim some autonomy for herself, to be an active participant in her fate, however limited. So she reached out to where his voice hovered in the dark.

He was tall. She knew that already, but even sitting, he was nearly a head higher than her. Her fingers ran into his clavicle, and she moved, quick and soft, in hopes of catching a glimpse with her alternate sight.

His face told a story of a man, still in youth, with sharp features: a long nose, large and soft lips. His pronounced cheekbones set off the softness of his jaw. Clean shaven, thick-throated. But otherwise, nothing out of the ordinary.

Her fingers, suddenly burning from the over-sensation, fell away. "You don't ... feel like a monster." She recalled her words to him in the interrogation room, when they had first spoken. How he made no attempt to deny her accusation.

"I am. I am not a good man."

When he reached for her, she felt the faded scarring from his ordeal before the altar and the sacred fire. The coal that burned twin wounds into his palms. She'd had time to think while she waited for him, and she could find no other explanation than that he took the pain of the ritual to spare her. Bacta had clearly been applied to speed recovery, or she would have felt the weeping welts she'd seen before he concealed his skin away in his gloves. But bacta could only do so much. He would bear the scars for the rest of his life. She could not exactly square the knowledge of that with what he told her now. 

"Are you going to hurt me?"

The halt before his response told her the question took him unawares. "No," he said. "No, I won't hurt you."

Thus far, Lord Ren had been firm, formal, but not a liar. She found she believed him.

With that knowledge, she felt the twinge of fortitude she needed to initiate. It was not something she would have wanted or asked for had the situation not been so particular. Rey's desires were animalistic, but they had always hovered just over the threshold of maturity. One could catch scavengers copulating some nights, and it didn't look appealing. The women made noises that sounded like a dying lothcat, and the men weren't much better.

Lord Ren adjusted her without grace or chivalry, but without malice. She couldn't fault him for his artlessness because she wasn't exactly helpful -- to say nothing of the fact that she knew nothing of how to seduce or entice. His studied touches were clinical: a hip here, a breast there. While he felt her out, she was emboldened to do her own exploration. He felt hard and massive and hot. It was not the kind of stifling heat drifting from the vents of Mustafar but a living, branding, kinetic energy burning from within. 

Oh, God. He was going to devour her alive.

But his dispassioned execution tempered his flames. Rey felt discomfort flowing into pain at his penetration. Touch and sensation in a part of her that was unused to awareness. Though she was able to pace him for the simple fact that he needed her to help guide him in the sightless dark.

Rey inhaled sharply through her nose.

"Should I stop?"

No, go on. We're almost there, no point in turning back now.

She tried to help him by angling her hips, measuring her success by his hardness of breath. There were moments when she approached what she could only call an alien pleasure. Fingernails skimming the skin of a primordial sensation, unfurling as though waiting for the right moment to flower. But when she moved to try to chase it, her invisible spouse went passive and rigid. She wondered, had he ever pleasured a woman before? And if so, why did he withhold pleasure from her now? Did he despise her so? It was hard to imagine the Lord of the Knights of Ren, student of the Sith, and enforcer of the First Order, unskilled in any art of passion. Could it be that in this one instance, Ren was obedient to the Jedi and Sith preclusions against attachments? It seemed unlikely. A man of his age and power. Surely he’d had his fill of women.

He did not kiss her, and she wasn’t certain what she would have done if he tried. For most of the act, he kept his face beside her own, bent so that his warm breath pressed humidity beneath her silver collar.

By certain signs, Rey was made aware of his completion. He drew away from her without a word, removing his colossal weight and consuming heat from the bed; stepped down and across the room; went through the door, and was gone.

For a long time, Rey lay there. She felt sore and sticky and tender-hearted. She didn’t exactly feel used, but neither did she feel cherished. Ren hadn’t been tender, nor had he been cruel. And there was undoubtedly a vulnerability there: though he declined to let her see him, he exposed himself to her in other ways; in the yet more intimate, blind sensation of bodies fumbling in utter darkness. That led her to wonder, was it unique to her? Did he bring that oblique gift to all his lovers? She pushed the thought away from her. It skirted too close to something like hurt.

Did it matter, anyway? Did she really care if her husband loved her? The question sat uncomfortably along her heartbeat, so she turned her thoughts toward the future. What was to become of her now? Had they successfully secured her away from Snoke? When did Lord Ren intend to train her, and what did that entail? And how long would she play along, staying on the better side of the First Order, hanging her fate on the whims of a stranger?

Rey lay on her side, curling up. Overwhelm built and built in her until she felt stuffed and bloated and in desperate need of release. She gave herself exactly six minutes to cry. No more, no less.


	8. The Morning After

Kylo did not feel the need to dwell on the events of the prior evening: the fact that it was quite pleasant -- okay, better than pleasant; that the fragrant smell of his bride, like linen left to dry out in the sun and wind, mixed with sickly-sweet perspiration, still clung to his hair; that some unnamed thing spread warm and comforting over his thighs at the knowledge that he was her first. It buzzed in the back of his mind as he went to the small room he’d set aside for his quarters to try to rest. 

When he could not sleep, he dressed and ascended the top of the tower to convene with his Knights and make sure all was well. He certainly didn't _want_ to think of intimacy with the scavenger as a risk to his autonomy and a window for weakness. 

Kylo dismissed himself to a side room, with a First Order issue bunk and a drab blanket and slept a few hours before waking again. He ate a little something. The immediate impression as he exited the Red Room, of being entangled with Rey beyond his understanding, must be controlled. Attachment, _within reason_. It was the best he could do for now.

He moved on to the next step in his haphazard his plan; prepping his Knights, for the inevitable confrontation with Snoke. _Do not engage, never engage_. It was easy enough in principle, difficult in practice. Kylo himself was known to lash out and risk discipline doled out swiftly and effectively afterwards. He had the scars to prove it.

When morning dawned, rosy and warm, the first sign of trouble reached their tucked-away planet, in the form of a stiff recording sent by General Hux. It went as follows:

_Ren. Your subordinates on the Star Destroyer do not appear to know where you are, nor where the Supreme Leader's prisoner from Jakku has gone. Let us hope she has not been misplaced. Because the Supreme Leader does not imagine you would defy him so blatantly, he requested your shuttle be scoured for in the Outer Rim vicinity. Imagine his surprise when he found you scuttled like a rat to Mustafar, and in apparent haste and secrecy. Prepare yourself. Supreme Leader is coming for what is his. The scavenger had better be with you, and unharmed. As for you, well. That will depend on the situation in Mustafar when Supreme Leader arrives._

***

Kylo sent for Rey and had her brought to him in the tower. She was led by a humanoid attendant, one of his and not of the Alazmac, and followed by the stormtrooper. 

Rey wore sensible clothing, picked out from the selection of various articles in different styles and sizes he'd had provided for her, and her hair in the three buns he'd seen her in consistently since his Knights scooped her up from Jakku. Her presence in the Force preceded her, and he guessed this was only because she did not know enough yet to mask it, and not because she deliberately sought him out to communicate. As for her Force presence, she felt the same, only slightly different. Like a note or flavor of her energy had adjusted a degree or two. The pattern of her that existed in the Force all along, the one he sensed without realising -- it had drawn closer, darker, easier to pick out. He couldn’t tell why. Within the space of an instant, the fear that something was wrong came and went. The bio collar would have alerted him to anything that threatened her well-being.

When Rey’s eyes came up to the visor of his mask, she cast them away again immediately, and the emotion coming off of her was not the customary fear at seeing his mask but something more refined and evasive.

"The Lady Rey, my lord," introduced the attendant. She had sharp cheekbones and small eyes, and Kylo found it rather unpleasant to look at her. He much preferred the neat and efficient presence of the stormtrooper assigned to accompany Rey.

Rey folded her hands and slowed to a stop, but her attention faltered to the control room, alive with screens and holograms and blinking lights, knobs and levers and outdated but functioning machinery from the days of imperialism. 

"It's old technology," Kylo said, by way of explanation. As if she had ever been in any so fine a place before they caught her! "But what the Empire built, it built to last. The equipment still functions at peak performance. Come with me."

He drew her out of the central command and to the opening which, in times past would have been battlements for defence against the now-extinct Mustafarians but was now used for redundant observation. High above the surface of Mustafar, Kylo paced; and Rey, in her brown and cream clothing, of the sort a distinguished household servant would wear, followed a few steps behind. He rested a gloved hand on the streamlined edge of the battlement and looked out.

"My Master is on his way," he said.

Behind him, Rey fidgeted, then approached the ledge and stood beside him. He could not smell the scent of sweat or sex he had left on her just a short while ago. She must have washed him off of her. The movement of air was more free up here, which eased the suffocation characteristic to the place lower down.

"What's going to happen?" she asked.

Kylo narrowed his eyes and focused on the horizon. Choking clouds hung low in the atmosphere; any light from the day slanted in between the land and the sky.

"He'll call for me first and ask me to explain myself. He will dispense with whatever punishment he sees fit, and then he will want to see you. This part is very important, Rey. He's going to test you. I'm not sure how, but it is imperative that you do not fight him. Resistance could kill you. And that's not even considering if he wishes to actively cause you harm."

Rey digested this wordlessly. He waited, and she did not reply, so he tore his eyes away from the skyline to look at her. She wore a glazed-over expression.

"Rey. Do you hear me?"

She nodded, licking her lips, but still did not look toward him.

Something compelled him to keep talking. "You're under my protection now. I won't allow you to be harmed."

"That's not exactly reassuring, coming as it is from behind a mask."

Now he swivelled his body to face her. He wore no cape or cowl; if he had it would have billowed out around him, caressing her and covering them in a private pocket of fabric. Rey remained staring out over the landscape. "Do you have reason to doubt me?"

She shrugged, a sloppy movement that showed she was more shaken than she wished to let on. "I hardly know you."

"You know me well enough," he answered, neither sharp nor sentimental. His thoughts circled around the night before, not quite landing.

Rey hugged herself; he couldn't imagine that she felt a chill. "I suppose only very special wives get to see your face."

This perplexed him. He was tempted to peek into her mind to discern the problem but thought better of it. The slow mechanism of his brain creaked and slid into place, unlocking his understanding. She was _hurt_.

"No one is permitted to see my face," he said. "It's not a personal slight, scavenger."

She singed him with her stare. "Of course not, Lord Ren."

The tone of her voice drove his slight home to him. Through the voice modulator of his mask, he let out a defeated breath. He had not anticipated that it would take more than a formal sealing ceremony and their natural coming together in the carnal act to join them in principle and purpose. If they were going to withstand Snoke, it was imperative they present a unified front.

"Lord Ren is ... rather formal, isn't it? Just Kylo is fine."

She smouldered. Kylo’s temper contracted and he had to fall back on a meditation technique of visualisation and breathing to keep it restrained. If she were _just_ a padawan, this would not be an issue. But as a wife, he needed her cooperation. Especially as they were on the threshold of their very first battle together.

“When the Supreme Leader calls for you, you answer his questions politely and directly; you do not argue with him; and you let _me_ do the talking. Is that understood?”

The edge to her softened. “Yes, Kylo.”

This was somehow worse. The hurt was back again, dominating. If she were angry, he could be angry. Anger was always preferable to the alternative, even if he wasn’t sure what the alternative was. Discomfort, maybe. A sense of wrongness. 

Don’t be that way. It makes me crazy. Fix it fix it fix it _fix it_.

“You think me harsh and unyielding. But I must emphasise the necessity of your cooperation in this. I have survived longer in his sight and under his shadow than any other.” His voice drifted somewhere near contemplation, and he closed his eyes, forcing away the oppressive memory of his many years. He centred himself. Soon. Soon he would be out from underneath that shadow. The apprentice was the first step to his emancipation.

The slough of his thoughts tingled along the edges, drawing his attention. Something he said had piqued her interest -- she was focusing on him, and, whether she knew it or not, now twitched the thread -- more rope now than string -- that bridged their minds. It tugged at its anchor, and to Kylo’s dismay, vibrated in deep, private places. He panicked, mentally retreating from the glittering waves of her he had only so recently been tempted to pilfer.

One step back. Two.

Rey’s eyes widened a little bit, becoming conscious of what she did. She gasped, hand flying to her mouth. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Kylo’s skin flashed cold. Why was _she_ apologising? 

“It’s fine,” he said. 

He left her, resolving firmly not to think on why that was a lie. Too many steps ahead.

***

Rey did not realise she had kept herself so closed off the night before until she reached out to him unintentionally. Before, when she thrust into him, to repel him from the privacy of her own thoughts, she’d waded into his fear and anger, which, while not endearing him to her, alerted her to a humanity within him. This time, the way he spoke about the Supreme Leader, with a suffocating and defeated intimacy, she yearned for more. For some deeper understanding, despite the darkness she feared in him. Maybe it was the sensitivity of having been rejected in so many ways by the man who was now her husband; maybe the lingering vulnerability of them coming together in the dark as man and wife. Rey dove for the opening when she saw an opportunity for a connection. Before she knew it, she was invading him, the way he had her. 

Two things about this discomfited her: one, it came effortlessly, without her even meaning to, and two; what she tasted, brief and passing, was a throbbing loneliness, the ache of which lingered with her long after he withdrew.

_Don’t be afraid_ \-- his words, from earlier, when he touched her, mind to mind, like the skimming of skin, like a promise -- _I feel it too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday today! Please leave a comment? ^_^


	9. Snoke

Kylo went out to meet Snoke when his shuttle arrived, exactly half a standard day after first receiving Hux's message.

It was not usual for the Supreme Leader to leave his flagship; less so for him to go out to meet a subordinate. The pulse of Fortress Vader tensed with expectation. The cultists had some vague understanding of Snoke as the successor to the Emperor, and considered him worthy of their loyalty because Darth Vader would. It was unclear whom they would champion should Kylo and Snoke come to clash. Kylo, for his part, determined not to find out. Not today, anyway.

He had his Knights with him and kneeling as the craft unboarded. Snoke's personal guard accompanied him, observable from a mile away by the blood red armour they wore. No one knew their exact numbers. Only Snoke and the head of the guard could say how many security personnel existed, and where. It kept people on edge, and wisely so. One never knew when another smear of crimson would rocket out from behind the ranks to come to the aid of the Supreme Leader. It discouraged insubordination, to say the least.

Snoke was a creature of indeterminate race, tall but shrivelled-looking, with a good part of his face gouged out and left hollow. It was understood that the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker was responsible for Snoke's deformity. Though the details were hidden, no one dared pry. He dressed in rich robes, bald and beardless, stooping and beady-eyed. He was a force, for all that. His grim presence put one in mind of death, and his predilection for physical punishment was quick to ruthless. One who once saw him did not easily forget.

Kylo slowed his approach as his Master moved across the landing platform in the red-tinged evening. Kylo did not even manage to sink to a knee before Snoke's extended hand clawed at his throat and body, and Kylo found himself flung down, choking, his cape twisted and his helmet bashed onto the tender front of his skull.

The collapsed feeling in his torso, the screaming pain along his brain, left him gasping for air, straining through the tightening of his esophagus, struggling up to his hands and knees. He could see his Knights behind him, but he knew they stood at attention, weapons sheathed, heads bowed.

Snoke strode the remaining distance between himself and his apprentice, leaning a little in a mocking image of a mother bending toward her supplicant child. He pressed his palm down before him, and Kylo slammed back into the ground, prone and vulnerable to attack. Kylo's anger reared and kicked, but he kept it tethered. In his mouth, the tainted taste of blood pooled.

Snoke spoke. "Stupid, rash boy. What have you done now?"

***

Rey spent the hours pacing the Red Room, with TZ-1719 backed into a corner by the series of questions battering her. What was the Supreme Leader like? How big was he? Did he speak the common standard tongue? And where was he from, and what did he expect from his subordinates? Was he quick to punish, and quick to reward? How involved was he in policy and execution? How did Kylo Ren fit in a First Order headed by Snoke? What was his function? What was the nature of their relationship? And what was their history?

TZ answered the best she could, from what she knew, which was not much, but more than some. The origins of the Supreme Leader were nebulous; but it was generally accepted that he had been grooming his apprentice for years before his rise to dominion and the subsequent rise of the First Order in the galaxy. Kylo Ren, along with his Knights, functioned independently of the ranks of the First Order, and their methods were far less uniform and more mercenary. They were, however, ultimately loyal to Snoke.

Rey's questions often repeated themselves with slight changes. These TZ-1719 answered as a matter of course, without pointing out the small chance of their being helpful. 

***

Rey was brought down, lower and lower, into the very bowels of the black tower. Heat, which she always assumed to rise, dilated, and the smell of sulphur scorched the air. The cultists had made Jannah stay behind, and their silent escort, combined with the lack of any human companionship, made Rey feel as though she had forsaken the living to join the dead in some hellish underworld. They ushered her in through an opening lit with the glow and drenched with the heat and oppressive stench of living molten lava.

When Rey entered the cavern, she felt him at once. A rush of pain and anxiety, pinched and withholding, but there all the same. He was the first thing her eyes went to. Kylo stood, neither facing toward her nor away, but sideways in a waiting stance, half of him cast in shadow from the glowing lava. He was covered, as always, so that no inch of skin could be seen. And he stood tall and commanding, but there was a slight slackness to him, as though his body hung on a nail, as though he was only just keeping on his feet. His muted pain leaked out to her -- evidence enough for her to know he had been used poorly since the time he left her at the top of the tower overlooking Mustafar. The recognition froze her blood and flamed her fear.

She hovered her attention over him for a heartbeat; as she watched, he turned, slightly, toward the further end of the cavern; and in doing so, directed her, a faint nudge from his consciousness to hers. Then he withdrew his direct contact, but his attention remained, hovering over her like the hands of a parent over a small child taking its first step.

It was then that Rey saw Snoke. He lounged on a crude stone throne, a dark shape illuminated queerly from the lava boiling in its lake behind. He was a black miasma on the border of her mind, and she felt slightly nauseated. 

Armoured and speared guards came behind her, closing in, forcing her forward one step at a time. Rey swallowed and tried to steady herself. She had looked death in the eyes before, and lived. She was not about to cower now. When she felt the panic rise in her despite her resolution, the invisible hands of Kylo Ren fluttered around her, not quite touching, preparing to catch her should she fall into some dark cold depth.

When the praetorian guards pushed her no further, Rey eased up, exhaling her relief. She kept her arms at her sides, head slightly bowed, but did not otherwise move.

"So this is the scavenger," came the grave voice drifting from the shadow slung over the throne. "Such a homely and inconsequential looking thing, to hold such power."

The creature on the throne shifted, leaning from one propped arm to another. "Tell me, child. What is your name?"

"It's ... Rey," she forced out, voice unsteady on its legs. And as an afterthought, "Supreme Leader."

Snoke made a click of tongue against teeth. "And do you know why you have been bought here?"

"Do you mean, away from Jakku? Or here specifically, Supreme Leader?"

"Let us start with the first."

"I am told I have ... abilities .... that are of interest to many. Abilities I share with others who are on either side of a galactic war."

The face of the creature before her looked like a ruined smudge in the shadow of its chair. As though someone had started to paint a portrait and then grown frustrated, smearing the paint before it dried.

"True enough. And the latter question?"

Rey's panic hammered in her chest. Answer his questions directly, Kylo had said. "Lord Ren -- Kylo -- brought me here to marry him."

There was a silence like the silence before a kettle boils over. Then, the cold and mucilaginous tentacles of the Supreme Leader crawled into her. Rey gasped, squeezing shut her eyes. Her instinct was to lock up; but a memory of diving into ruined spacecrafts scavenging for parts came to her aid. If one went stiff one was more likely to suffer injury. Better to be at ease, as much as was possible. The resilient could withstand greater impact. That, and the tiny but fading presence of Kylo Ren gave her the courage she needed to loosen and let Snoke sieve through her.

It was not at all like the dry and curious probing of Kylo, but insidious and slithering, damp and devouring. Rey focused on continuing to breathe, on not crying or lashing out when the Supreme Leader charged through her private cache of memory and emotion, until he found what he was looking for: the night before, snapshots of skin and sensation and breath and vulnerability, oh the vulnerability! -- Rey knew the tears slipped from beneath her lids but she was powerless to halt them. She curled in on herself and hugged what little dignity she had left, as Snoke pulled away with the knowledge of her wedding night stripped and ransacked for his keen perusal.

A sigh, as though from something inhuman. "You have been thorough, my boy. Everything has been done, executed with a precision I did not know you capable of. By every law, Sith and Jedi, Empyrean and Republic, this creature is your licit spouse." 

Rey blinked her eyes open and saw the shape lean forward. Two protrusions that must have been hands came out and met, steepling fingers.

"I should kill you for this," the voice said. It was not a threatening timbre; it didn't have to be. "I should kill the both of you. What do you say to that?"

"I would venture to say -- and I think you know, Supreme Leader -- that it would not be in your best interests." Kylo’s voice, firm not forceful, treaded carefully over the grain of suppressed pain.

"No?"

"I have the scavenger; she is bound to me by law, and by a greater rule that exists in the Force, light or dark, which has guided our Sith ancestors and brought them to supremacy for centuries past. Let me _train_ her. I can make something of her, as you have taught and molded me. Please, Supreme Leader, allow me to prove myself."

The words coming from Kylo Ren sounded muffled; she decoded them after a delay of a few seconds, and when she understood, she felt the sudden urge to be sick.

Rey was aware of very little after that. Voices came and went, moving as though she were under a very deep layer of a soft and resistant substance. She was standing one minute, and the next she was on the stony floor. The voices seemed to flow over her, and then: Kylo Ren was near, in both mind and body. She felt him in several ways with several senses, which she could not quite separate, not that she tried. She felt her entire being like an open sore, exposed to the harsh and pitiless elements; but Kylo Ren came around her like a gauze, with a gentle pressure, both painful and necessary. 

Time must have jumped because the next thing she was conscious of was being cradled to his chest. She knew it was him, firstly because of the resonance of him all around her in the Force; and secondly because of the familiar expanse of him and the beating beneath the thick black fabric against which she pressed. 

The memory of Snoke pilfering their intimacy came vaulting down the halls of her memory, and she squirmed.

Kylo braced to steady himself against her thrashing, but she managed to writhe free -- falling to her hands and knees in some dark, closed place -- and retched.

***

After she emptied her stomach in the abandoned corridors winding beneath the fortress, Kylo managed to gather Rey up again and get her into bed. The stormtrooper awaited them, and when questioned testily by Lord Ren, admitted that Rey had not had anything to eat or drink as long as she had been in her company. Kylo refrained from punishing her; he'd had enough violence for one day, and as the muggy darkness of night covered Mustafar, he felt weary.

His wife had done well. He'd been watching her closely, ready to intercede at the slightest sign of danger. But he had been correct in his anticipation that his own beating at the hands of Snoke would satisfy his Master’s urge for a good while. He hadn't been sure how Snoke would test her; and when it dawned on him that his Master contrived a way to test both her mettle and Kylo's own claims to the validity of their marriage, he wished he'd had some idea so he could have better prepared her. Kylo was used to Snoke's invasion of privacy, but Rey turned grey and limp. His fear that she would fight back, endangering herself, quickly receded to the fear that she would not withstand Snoke’s ravages and be mentally injured. But after Snoke finished, and she fell, Kylo covered her with his consciousness, while approaching with deference, so as not to set off the praetorian guards, and discovered her weakened but thriving. Her hurt was more emotional than physical. She would be all right.

Snoke dismissed him with a sneer, and Kylo took his leave, hauling up the girl before the Supreme Leader could change his mind.

Now he lay her, moving in and out of consciousness, into her bed in the dying light. The memory of the night before rose unbidden and tasted acrimonious in the back of his throat. 

Snoke _tainted_ it. 

Kylo could feel the pollution spreading in that part of her mind, and to him by extension. Their shared, secret experience, exposed and humiliated. When he tried to comfort her through their latent bond, Rey flinched away and hardened her consciousness to him like a shell. Kylo realised, as he folded the cover over her, and she turned away from him to give him her back, that they would not be intimate again. At least not for a very long time. It gnawed and squirmed in him, and he thrust a fist into the polished wardrobe, splintering wood and scattering dust as he left the room, sliding the door shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the birthday wishes! Trying to keep up the momentum while I feel inspired. I appreciate each and every comment. <3


	10. Domestic Disturbance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaannd here come the Beauty and the Beast parallels! ;)

Rey was exhausted, but sleep gave her little solace. In her half-conscious writhing and turning, she would hit her hip or a certain place on her arm, a tender spot on her head, and pain radiated out from it. It would jerk her from sleep, and when she put her fingers to the source of pain to feel for broken skin, splintered bone, and bruises, there was nothing -- only the memory of pain, too real to be imagination.

At some point in her broken sleep, an Alazmec attendant brought in a tray of steaming food and roused her, motioning that she should eat. She felt a trace of nausea but she opened a covered dish with a creamy porridge and dried fruit, and when she brought the spoon to her mouth, her hunger returned fully. She ate everything provided for her, then crawled under the blanket and fell back asleep.

The next thing she knew, someone moved in the room, and she poked her head out from beneath the covers, relieved to see Jannah, who was picking up the splinters of wood from the punched wardrobe and guiding the door open carefully so that it didn't snap off its hinges. The stormtrooper put her hands into the wardrobe and parted the clothes to find something clean and fitted.

"Jannah."

The stormtrooper turned to her name and smiled. "Oh good, you're awake. And you ate something, it looks like. Lord Ren was adamant that you have some food, a bath, and some fresh air today. The Supreme Leader left last night. Lord Ren wishes to begin your training immediately."

Rey cycled her legs to rid herself of the covers. "Did you see him? Lord Ren, I mean?"

Jannah nodded, distracted with her task.

"But, with the mask on? Did he look, did he seem -- hurt?"

Jannah carried some folded clothes over to Rey, who swung her legs over the side of the bed. "If he were hurt, I was not aware. He was insistent that your biometrical readings should be brought back up to normal." She hesitated a moment, her eyes going from the folded clothes in her hand to Rey. Then she sat next to her on the bed, leaving the space of a body between them. "If I may ask, what happened, my Lady?"

Rey's throat swallowed around old tears. She shook her head. "The Supreme Leader is ... he ..."

Jannah placed a hand on Rey's shoulder. Quietly, "Never mind. It's not important. What matters now is that you have had some sleep and refreshment, and the Lord Ren is eager to see you."

***

Rey did not hurry to her summons. She lingered in the bath, emptying and refilling the tub when the water cooled. Such luxury seemed sinful but it was _so good_. The longer she soaked, the less she felt like coming out of the bathroom. She felt sorry for ignoring Jannah's knocking, but spite boiled in her, drinking deep from her shame and humiliation. 

_This was all Kylo's fault_. 

He sent his Knights to steal her and then ambushed her with an ultimatum; made her let down her guard enough to give up her body and yet refused to show her his face; and stood by while Snoke ravished her private memory of her first time -- never mind that she would be in the clutches of the Supreme Leader had she not gone along with his plan; never mind that he took the burning coals in her stead and a beating so severe she could feel it resonating down whatever nonconsensual bond connected them; it was no excuse. He wanted her for a wife, well. He’d get her. She was no meek conquest. Let him come to her. 

She scrubbed at the angry tears streaking her cheeks. When at last, she felt she could absorb no more water, would burst from the containment of the tiny area, she slammed her palm into the console to open the door and came out, polished from her aggressive bathing and just anger.

Only to find Kylo sitting in a high-backed chair, leg crossed, mask blank, waiting for her.

Rey yelped -- as one does when a shadowed man prowls in wait in one's room -- and tripped back into the bath chamber, grabbing for a towel. She wrapped herself and hid just beyond the opening of the door, before calling out.

"What do you want?"

She tried to feel backwards in time, tried to determine if she missed his presence coming in, or whether he had somehow managed to hide himself from her. Now that he was here, she felt the familiar brooding pressure of him, just along the fringes of her awareness -- though it was conspicuously muted.

"I sent for you over an hour ago," came the mask-filtered voice.

"And I declined to come when you called," she retorted.

There was the scrape of the chair as he stood. Rey braced herself, but he did not enter.

"If you're trying to punish me for your ill treatment at the hands of Snoke, it would behoove you to heed me when I say that he will do it again -- unless you learn to defend yourself -- and that such a skill must be _taught_."

Rey scowled to herself. Bastard had an answer for everything. 

Sucking in her breath, she stepped in view of the open doorway. Clutching her towel with one hand, she thrust the finger of the other out toward him. "If you think that I'm just going to appear at your beck and call, fawn over you like a trained animal, and be a grateful wretch for the rest of my life because you saved me from a worse fate, you're _thoroughly_ mistaken!"

He cocked his head at her. "And if you believe for a minute that I wouldn't tear down that door and drag you out here flailing and screaming, you think too well of me."

Her mouth gaped. So now he was the good guy for not barging in on her bath and dragging her out? The threat of his words sunk into her and lit every nerve. Oh, he wanted a fight, did he? Well then, she would give him one.

Rey turned and latched onto a durasteel bar along the side of the tub, which she had noted was coming loose while she bathed. She pried it with such force that the thing came away with little resistance. She faced Kylo again, brandishing her weapon, as she had the doctor previously who tried to stab her in the medbay.

Kylo seemed to study her. His head rolled to tilt in the other direction. But he did not step toward her, and Rey did not move to strike him.

There was a queer sound from behind the mask; a tightening sensation in Rey's abdomen; and she realised he laughed.

"This is good," he said. "This is very good. You're ripe for training. And your passions flare up in the Force strong and pure; with just a bit of control, you could be a force to be reckoned with. Don’t you see it?"

Rey adjusted her grip on the steel bar but remained offensive. The way he talked of her, even through the modulated voice of his mask she could hear his sincerity. He was _excited_. Her latent ability brought him to life in a way that eluded him in the bedroom.

What kind of man was this, to bond not through human connection but an abstract, amorphous Force, neither personal nor good? Admittedly, Rey did not excel at human interaction -- she was too crass, too quick to argue, and she didn’t trust easily. But she knew that a tender word, a smile, an assurance and a confession of solidarity could do more to bring two people together than a lifetime of living in close contact.

"Would you like to trade that piece of junk in for a real weapon?" he asked.

Kylo’s hand moved to the belt cinching his waist and she recognised the hilt of the energy weapon he had ignited once before. He set it to life again before her, and its ruby beauty paled the red light of Mustafar in comparison.

Rey eyed the lightsaber. "You mean you'd teach me how to use one of those?"

Kylo rotated his wrist, showcasing the blade. "It's called a lightsaber. The Jedi and Sith have traditionally carried them as their weapons, of war and state, for millennia. Do you want to hold it?" 

He thumbed the ignition and the blade went dark. He lowered the hilt to the ground and set it down by his feet, with the slow and cautious movements of one approaching an untame animal. He slid the hilt across the floor toward Rey. She hesitated for two seconds. Then all restraint fled, and she dropped the bar and snatched up the lightsaber. 

She wasted no time in igniting it. It thrust to life; Rey started but kept a firm hold on the hilt, ridged and cool in her palm. The blade blazed cheerfully. What she would have done for a weapon like this on Jakku!

"It's good, isn't it? You will have your own, one day, but first you must learn how to wield it."

She looked from the lightsaber to him; and she knew her scepticism, if not in her face, was clear in the energy pulsing off of her.

"What do you say, scavenger?"

Rey did not look at him. She counted out five long seconds. Then she jerked forward. The lightsaber, angled and swinging. She launched herself at Kylo. 

In a single fluid motion, he deflected her. She could not see how. He hardly seemed to shift out of place. What she knew was that one instant she was rushing him; the next her own momentum sent her flying face-first into the mattress of the bed.

A pinch to the pressure point on her wrist, and her grip thrust open. The saber landed on the ground.

Rey wanted to cry. But her pride smoothed her spine and cooled her temper. She righted herself on the bed and adjusted her towel modestly. Turned the ring around her neck as though it were a piece of jewelry she chose to wear and not a collar.

Kylo Ren picked his weapon from off of the floor and clipped it to his belt. His movement was less elegant than his deflection had been, as though he had jarred an injury. (Rey remembered her painful sleep of the night before.) He took the clothing Jannah had set out from off a table and laid it at the end of the bed. 

"Get dressed and come down. The Alazmec waiting outside your room will bring you to the forest of irontrees just outside the castle."

***

Kylo didn't have time to soak long in a bacta tank. As soon as Snoke left, he began to make preparations for Rey's training. She would need comfortable clothing that did not restrict her movements; practice weapons with functioning safety devices in place; plenty of good food and rest. Her medical check was only half complete. He would send for a sentient doctor to finish her vaccinations and bloodwork. 

He made do with the application of bacta to his cuts and abrasions. It could have been worse: none of his bones were broken, and the internal bleeding seemed limited. He’d have to go carefully, but it was nothing that ought to keep him off his feet.

His sleep was troubled, and when he woke, it was with the stiffness of compounded pain that always accompanies wounds the morning after. He drew himself inward, focusing on the hurt; channelled it toward inflaming his determination and his power. In battle the same technique could be the difference between failure and victory. 

And he _was_ approaching a battle, in a sense. The scavenger wife rejected him, which was her prerogative. He would not force himself on her. To be truthful, he hadn’t anticipated much sex at all when he contrived his plan to make her his wife. His violent, passing disappointment in the Red Room when she turned her body and mind away from him was a weakness he needn’t give more thought to than it deserved. But he _would_ see to it that she was trained. Even had he not been sincere in his desire to teach her, it was imperative that they present Snoke with results to conciliate him. For as long as they had to, until they were powerful enough together to kill him. 

Kylo did not let himself dwell long on that potentiality. One step at a time. The next step: train the girl.

When she came out of the bath, flushed with alarm, her nakedness appeared to him secondary to her flaring, clawing defiance. He ought to have anticipated she'd feel cornered into survival instinct. Especially after the encounter with Snoke. And with the bio collar on her neck and nowhere to run on the stranded, dying planet of Mustafar, of course she'd choose to fight. 

What he didn’t expect was how _awing_ she would be. The shimmering waves he tried to ride, now heightened and mighty, a veritable swell as of a proton storm in the black field of space. A different part of her opened to him, like the mouth of a dragon, minacious and combustible and lined with teeth -- something more real and in harmony with what lay within than the silent dignity and moody compliance. 

Rey was the kind of creature who was good for the mere sake of being good. The kind of person he had been, before the Dark Side liberated him. People like them, they needed goodness as a way to show their worth. See me, look at me, do you love me now? And she wanted so _very much_ to be accepted, to _belong_. It was everywhere, on every root and limb and vein of her being, as he had run his hands over it when he had her strapped to the interrogation table, unconscious. 

She couldn’t see. He must _show_ her. If she could only let go of the disingenuous expectations limiting her, set by an uncaring universe, and be _herself_ \-- she was more breathtaking than the scintillating, thriving bed of kyber crystals, growing in the deep and dark, within the womb of Ilum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't promise I will always be this efficient in updating but am forging ahead while I can. Much credit goes to englishable who betas like the dickens and gives excellent feedback, so be sure to thank her! (Commenting silences my inner imposter syndrome!)


	11. Lessons

The clothing Kylo and Jannah thrust onto Rey was comfortable and in-character. Her arms were bare, so she could get the full range of three-hundred and sixty degree movement she'd normally require with her staff; her shoes were sturdy, a kind of boot hybrid with good gripping soles and ankle support. She'd put her hair up in its usual practical buns and let the cultist take her through the winding ways of the castle, out through a hidden door that deposited them on the side of the fortress that unfurled into a black forest. 

Kylo awaited her, buckled and masked and as hidden as ever, but he held two weapons: her staff (Her _staff_! That meant the Knights removed it when they did her from Jakku and that it had been kept hidden and travelled with them this whole time!) and the hilt of a lightsaber without the cross-guard of Kylo's red blade.

Rey snatched for her staff without thought, and Kylo allowed it. She stepped back and swung it, this way, then that, testing it for weaknesses. It felt good in her hands.

The Alazmec cultist scuttled away just as the weapon curved up and nearly knocked him along the head. Rey hurriedly recomposed herself, in hopes Kylo hadn't seen her misstep. Not that she could tell in which direction he looked at any given time. She decided on a change of tactic and a change of subject.

"What's that?" she asked, looking at the second weapon Kylo held.

"It's a training saber," he said, turning it over to give her a clear view from all angles. "A low powered lightsaber with an intensified electromagnetic containment field so that it's safe for use by the unskilled."

Rey pointedly thrust her staff into the ground, as if to say, who are you implying here is unskilled?

He ignored her and went on. "A strike from this will result in a bruise or burn, but nothing that could cause permanent damage." He flicked it on and it flared blue. Rey stared at it in admiration as Kylo went on. "Normally, the training of a youngling would be initiated among a group of her peers at a temple academy or satellite praxeum. It would follow a strict and rigorous curriculum shared by several Masters. But you are neither young nor a beginner. You've been fighting most of your life. Unfortunately, this almost certainly guarantees that you've picked up some bad habits."

"Bad habits?" Rey's attention left the pretty saber and focused on offence.

"Let me see how you'd block with your staff."

Rey took her staff in both hands, holding it perpendicular to her body. With her feet firmly planted she braced the staff as though to block. "Weren't you paying attention at all the entire time your Knights chased me?"

"Not really. I hung back and let them do most of the heavy lifting. I wanted to watch but I was more focused on your emotional response than your technique. Let me see then."

She obliged him with a half-hearted swing of the staff.

"Your hips are good," Kylo said, following her movement with his eerily absent gaze.

Rey had to gather herself over the hiccough of a comment; Kylo seemed completely unfazed about the implication of his words. She wondered if he thought about where his too-large hands had pressed her pelvis flat, even as he worked her legs apart with the same methodical determination on their wedding night.

"Your stance could use some work. The lower to the ground, the better. Hm. It's not as bad as I feared. Your technique might successfully be translated into a double-edged saber at some point in the future; but for the present, I'd rather you begin by learning how to handle the standard single blade."

He turned off the training saber and tossed it to Rey, who caught it.

"Show me how you would attack, using that now."

***

The first part of the lesson consisted almost entirely of Rey executing single movements so that Kylo could watch with his steady stare, making notes to himself, some of which he divulged out loud. A few times, he came around to her and very carefully, very deliberately, placed a gloved hand to a limb to adjust her. Then he stood back and resumed his passive observation. Rey enjoyed the feeling of the cool lightsaber in her hands, the electric hum of its blade, and the glow like many concentrated stars plucked and pooled from the desert night.

Throughout, Kylo remained a pillar of patience and attentive instruction. Rey's temper frazzled all too easily if she slipped; if her body did not do as she wished it at first try, or if Kylo corrected her. Once or twice she snapped at him, though her shortness was neither admonished nor affirmed; but he continued as he had been, with serene and formal concentration.

It was hard for her to place, how she was near him simultaneously from within and without, in such a way that she could read him in more than mere social skill. She might be able to sense trouble in a bad corner of Niima, the tension of bodies and the dropping silence that indicated nothing good forthcoming. It was different with Kylo. He was as blank in demeanor and motion as his mask. He moved with a kind of clean sterility that was beautiful and repellent. But for all that, his … himness … was a pressure all around her -- or perhaps it was inside, so that it only seemed to bleed into the outer world. He was carefully controlled. So that she couldn’t have given a comprehensive overview of his interior climate. What she knew, she knew: the dull pain radiating up and down his body but pushed beyond the fringes of awareness; the knowledge of her, herself, tingling and enticing but worrying, somehow; and the sensation, which, for lack of a better word, she could only call _pleasure_ , at their work in that sooty wood.

After a time, Kylo called her to come and eat something, procuring a black bag of food and a vial of water. Rey didn't hurry to eat, instead lingering to see if he would take off his mask and share in the meal, but he walked a way in the distance, weaving between the black trunks of the trees. Rey's muscles tensed in an instinctive bid to flee, but the steady, smooth texture of the collar around her neck disabused her of any fantasy of escape. When Kylo came back, Rey sat cross-legged on the crumbling soil eating enthusiastically from some globular fruit, bite after luscious bite, until it dripped down her chin and she had to swipe at it with her bare arm.

Kylo disinclined to comment on her etiquette, which she judged wise.

"Aren't you going to eat something?" she asked.

"I ate this morning."

It was all the explanation she was going to get. Besides, one meal in a day was plenty, and who was she to argue with that?

"These trees," Rey said, taking the final bite of grainy flesh from her fruit and sucking on the pit. "I thought trees would be ... well, greener."

"They usually are. These irontrees were planted by the Alazmec all over Mustafar, in an attempt to heal the damage done by strident and irresponsible mining during the imperial period. They grew for a while but the damage was irreversible. The trees didn't take."

He lowered himself to the ground to join her; the stiff and careful movements jarred her memory of the night before.

She licked her lips, still holding the pit of the fruit between her thumb and forefinger. "You saw him before me, didn't you?"

"Who?"

"Snoke."

A pause, and then a nod of the mask.

"How badly did he hurt you?"

A lapse of noise, and the forest was too quiet; the kind of quiet that indicates the absence of life, where once it thrived. "I'm fine."

She studied the pit in her fingers; it was textured and round, like a moon. "Is that ... normal? What I mean is, should I expect to be hurt by you, in the course of my training?"

Nothing about him changed. But discomfort crept across the decaying dirt that separated them on the forest floor and her heart seized.

"It's normal," he said. "But you needn't expect it from me."

Rey brought her knees up and hugged them to herself, resting her chin and staring off through the permeating gloom, and for a long time they sat in silence. After a while, she ate and drank a little more; then Kylo roused them and insisted they carry on with training.

***

Rey could sense the weariness radiating off of him by the end of the day, with the red of spent daylight shafting through the trees. He never indicated it in stance or tone, but she resisted telling him in so many words that it was distracting. At last, he took the training saber from her and told her to get her staff.

"You may keep it," he said, "so long as you don't use it against myself or my servants."

Rey indicated agreement by slipping the leather strap of the staff over her head and arm, so that the staff itself lay flush against her back, between her shoulder blades. She felt a little less vulnerable with it, though she knew her possession of it was merely formal.

"You did well today," he said, and Rey tried not to let herself feel as pleased as she did. "We'll do it again tomorrow."

She followed him as he picked the unseen path back through the thick trees and up toward the climbing, double-towered castle. He took her as far as her room, where the savoury smells of stew and fresh-baked bread, and the grounding presence of Jannah, awaited her.

***

Rey wondered, when the lights flickered out, and she lay in silence and solitude in the overlarge bed, if Kylo would slip in through the door and join her. She wondered what she would do if he did. She felt certain she hadn't forgiven him for leading her, like a lamb to the slaughter, before his Master, to be pried apart and studied and shamed. But she also felt she wouldn't have had the heart to kick and hit, to drive him from the bed with the bruising seeping so deep into him that it overflowed into her. As she drifted into the amorphous land of sleep, she settled on letting him lie next to her, should he come. But if he tried to touch her or get underneath her clothes, she'd let him know immediately that his attentions were uninvited and unacceptable.

He never did come in the end.

***

Kylo enjoyed watching her. She had a raw grace complimentary to her nature, and a temper compatible with his own. While his directed, uncensored, toward everyone but her, hers was reserved in a special way for him. He took this neither as compliment nor insult. She was unduly gentle with the stormtrooper and could lapse into reveries that made her peaceful almost to the point of domestication. But a misplaced word or overstepped boundary had her snapping like the little desert krayt she was. His respect for her was not condescending but the respect that the misanthrope carries for all wild creatures: he knew full well that she could kill him, and it was this knowledge more than anything that made him respect her to the point of affection.

He could see that she was eager to learn, and that was half the battle. He wasn't sure how he'd have corralled her if she'd been set on being difficult. The first day consisted of him observing her and correcting tiny mistakes in her stance and mechanics that wouldn't do to carry over even into basic moves and skills. Better to uproot and retrain them before they went any further. She grew bored soon and wanted to know more; her interest manifested as a type of hunger that he felt bodily. It was a relief, at any rate, to step away from the hurt and fear that strained on him from her, oblivious though she was to her effect on him.

The next day he let her practice her double-handed hold and went over the seven forms of lightsaber combat.

"We'll start with Shii-Cho, which is the most basic form. When I make you move your joints as though on a pivot instead of a lock-and-key, it is with a mind for this combat style. You've already got a sense of it from using your staff: it's block, strike, repeat. Only you're a little too jerky and undisciplined when it comes to your movements."

"What style do you use, then?" she asked, turning.

Kylo sidestepped a swipe by her runaway lightsaber, gripping her elbow to keep it from singing him. " _Careful_. I use whatever I feel like is called for in the moment. Usually all of them or none of them. But you have to learn the rules first before you can break them."

She seemed distracted by his hand on her, so he let go and stepped out of striking range.

"Well," she said, "this Shii-Cho is easy.” She gave a little thrust with her saber. “When will I get to move on to the other ones?"

"Not so fast, little krayt. We haven't even skimmed the tip of your Force capabilities yet. Once you feel comfortable enough with the movements, we'll cover your sight and you'll have to maneuver without the use of that sense on which you rely overmuch."

"I could do that now," she said, turning off her lightsaber. "I could close my eyes and do the movements."

"You could. But could you hit a moving target?"

She dropped her saber and gaped at him. "Without _looking_? To see where it is? That's impossible!"

"Not impossible. Not with the Force."

He watched the revelation of this open her understanding. She put her eyes on him and lit up from within. "What is the Force? I -- I understand that it's something inside me, but ... it's inside you, too? And other people. That's right, isn't it?"

"The Force is an essence that exists within all living things, generated by them and feeding back into them, in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Its nature is neutral, and its goal is balance."

"I don't understand. If it's in everyone, why don't all living things have these abilities I'm supposed to have?"

"We don't know why only a percentage of all living things in the galaxy are Force sensitive. Perhaps it would upset the natural balance, if too many had access to it. You can think of it as a ... as a resonance, as a note of music that sounds in the galaxy. It's always there. For some, it is so subtle as to be inaudible. For others, it is a constant presence. People like you and me -- we can reach into the note of music and manipulate it, warp it and direct it, to change the music. We can travel with it, touch where it touches and know what it knows. It is how you were first sensed, all the way near the Unknown Regions."

She looked unsure. "If I'm strong with the Force, as you say, why has _he_ only wanted me recently? Couldn't he sense me before then?"

Kylo did not know the answer himself. But he said, "Perhaps something awakened you, creating a tremble in the note of the Force. Snoke heard it and sought you."

She took a step toward him, eyebrows drawn, and he followed her movement with a guardedness he did not understand. "But I think I ... now that I know what it is ... that I always felt you. That you were there, somehow, like a -- like you said, the constant sound, almost beyond sound, so that I wouldn't have known it was even there unless it were to stop."

Kylo swallowed. It was how _he_ felt. He recognised the recognition in her. He had conceptualised it as a pattern, repeating in the grand design, so prevalent that he hardly noticed, until she was drawn violently to his attention.

Rey came closer than before, he realised; and if he stood his ground, she would be nearly under him, with her scrutinising eyes and her sweet scent of linen-and-sweat. So he jerked away, saying they would finish for today and reconvene in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Darth Darcy being too proud? And is Rey Bennet actually prejudiced when she's essentially a prisoner? I can't even tell anymore. Ack! Please comment with your impressions? It helps me write!


	12. The Force

TZ-1719 -- or as she had begun to think of herself, Jannah -- spent the first few days of her mistress's training at a complete loss. She had never been idle before; productivity wasn't an empty First Order slogan to her, it was a way of life. She was good at what she did, and it gave her pleasure to do it. So finding herself suddenly cast on this godforsaken out-of-the-way planet, with no one to talk to, and nothing to do, would have been maddening for someone of lesser sangfroid. 

She commed her superiors early on to let them know what had become of her. After the wedding and Snoke's brief audience, she commed again to ask for any work that could be sent to her remotely. While she waited for a response, she took her time exploring the fortress.

The place existed in layers. Layers of history, rubble, and myth: a castle built over a Sith temple raised over a cave. Her universal database pulled up plenty of information about its history but very little about the layout. Not surprising, as its most recent use had been a fortress for the late recluse Darth Vader. The edifice itself was a haunted thing: the blueprints of which were scrawled in a fevered possession by an Imperial officer. 

Jannah was not a religious person. But she had seen things. Things that defied explanation without giving some credence to the Force, that mysterious energy that supposedly ran through every living thing like a current.

The silent cultists came and went like beetles scuttling across the floor of that cold rock -- what kind of devilry made the material cold in that molten world she couldn't guess -- going about their business. They paid her no attention. Besides the cultists, there were a handful of human servants and stewards, and the typical service droids that kept house and made repairs. Jannah attempted a conversation with the woman who most often interacted with her and Lady Rey, but she turned out as indifferent and sour as her face suggested.

There were several instances when she ran into a dead end or a locked door and had to turn back, so she guessed she had only covered about thirty percent of the entire structure -- and that was not taking into account the lower levels. Who knew how far down those extended? The more habitable parts of the castle had an extensive bath system, of which Jannah took advantage, and a small but efficient kitchen, manned by droids. The arrival of Lord Ren had been the catalyst for a daily delivery of fresh ingredients from off the planet, probably an orbiting greenhouse satellite. 

And the food -- the _food_! It was good, sinfully so. Jannah hadn't been one of the ingrates to complain about the tubes of nutrients that passed for meals in the First Order ranks, but she might have, if she'd been exposed to the textured, colourful, and robust food variety sooner. One evening, she and Lady Rey took turns closing their eyes and feeding each other bits of this and that and trying to guess which dish it came from. Rey's stomach was much weaker than Jannah's. She often could only eat a portion of what was on her plate, and when she was exceptionally hungry and reckless, the whole thing -- which then usually had her miserable for a good few hours afterward.

"What did you eat?" she asked her. "Before you came to Lord Ren?"

"When I did eat ... it was quickbread, and a few scraps here and there; there was a kind old woman who let me scrape whatever was left from her cauldron after she'd fed the shepherds. Sometimes, if I lingered in the market toward closing time, the fruit merchants would let me have a bruised shuura or a even a pear!"

Jannah looked at her mistress in poorly concealed wonder. She had been told that people across the galaxy were starving -- that this was what the First Order sought to right, when it went in with a ruthless arm, imposing its restrictions and its order -- but she had never been allowed the chance to speak with such a person.

"Were you often hungry, my Lady?"

Rey shrugged. "I hardly noticed most days. The thirst was worse."

"Forgive my prying, but -- you can read and write and do sums -- how did you learn, if you could barely keep yourself fed and sheltered?"

Rey laughed but it wasn't a belittling sound. "That took a bit more cunning! When I was still small, I could sometimes smuggle in to the tribal groups that taught their young in the evenings, after the day's work was done. Spending your days picking through junked star ships is also a good way to lift some knowledge here and there. I started to notice that certain shapes repeated themselves and meant something: exit, on, out, power. Things like that. I copied them, or brought them up with me if they were small enough, to compare them to the other shapes, which I learned were letters; and once I had a basic handle on them, I could pick up some discarded papers in Niima and decipher them. Practising came easily after that."

Jannah said, "When the First Order comes to power across the galaxy, children like you will have food and shelter and free education. No more inequality, no more systems in the hands of corrupt lawmakers and politicians with deep pockets. The First Order will put an end to human suffering."

Rey glanced aside, falling uncharacteristically quiet. "And to achieve that ... galactic conquest ... how many people have to die?"

Jannah blinked at her, not understanding. "As many as is necessary, my Lady. No more, no less. It is a small price to pay in order to bring peace once and for all."

Rey didn't answer. Her silence sat uncomfortably in Jannah's chest and puzzled her for days afterward.

When her superior officer contacted her, it was with a promotion: TZ-1719 was being removed to a special team, the details of which would be revealed to her gradually. This new assignment could be implemented remotely, and so she was to sit tight and await to be contacted by her liaison. In the meantime, she was to monitor First Order correspondence and look for anomalies in the choice of words or their patterns. Jannah could guess she was being poised to intercept leaked intel and root out potential traitors. Promotion indeed.

***

Kylo filtered what Snoke did and did not have access to about Rey. Their progress with her training he put front and center, hoping it would appease enough that he didn't pry further. The rest he kept behind the netted barrier in his mind. So long as he had something to offer him, Snoke would content himself with surveillance through Kylo and leave Rey be. In the meantime, he eased Rey into understanding and handling of the Force, in hopes that she would soon be able to guard her mind from predators.

Their routine was to meet every morning in the irontree forest, where Kylo would go over what he had already taught Rey and add more knowledge and technique a little at a time, so as not to overwhelm. In the middle of the day, they broke off. Rey ate and rested, and Kylo stepped away through the trees to drink something and expose his bare face to the air to breathe. Then they came back together in the afternoon to practice meditation and handle the Force. 

Sometimes, Kylo would shuck outer layers of his dark clothing. He considered the discomfort of training in constriction just another means to honing his powers and disciplining his will, and said so when Rey asked him about it.

"Why do you do that?" she asked. "Why do you push into the pain and discomfort like that?"

It did not surprise him she could read what he was doing.

"Peace is a lie. There is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me. That is the Sith code."

"You haven't taught me that," she said.

"I'm teaching you now."

"Do you expect me to adhere to that ... code?"

"No. You may access the Force in whichever manner you choose. But you may find it helpful."

She seemed unsatisfied with this answer, but he didn't wish to go into a long exposition of why he believed forcing a Force sensitive down any particular path was counterproductive and so often backfired.

"Sit now. Let me show you something."

***

He'd been working with her on sensing the Force at will, tangling her awareness in it and tugging at it so that by its resistance it could be made more clearly present. Now they sat, facing each other, and Kylo plucked a jagged stone from the ashy soil and played it in his fingers, before executing the most basic of Force skills, and tossing it up to float in the air before him.

"Once you are able to master the raw Force, you will then be able to manipulate things around you by means of its presence."

Rey's eyes locked in fascination on the floating stone. "I thought you said the Force is found in living things."

"So it is. In the trees, all around us, in the tiny, eyeless things deep in the soil. In you and me. Small stones are usually the first things younglings are taught to manipulate, because they have no Force impact and are therefore neutral. Here, try it." Without giving her a chance to second-guess herself, he tossed the rock toward her. She blocked it reflexively with the palm of her hand, but it fell to the ground.

"Try again."

She picked up the stone and threw it, but it fell back onto her hand and rolled off onto the ground again.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, here."

"Concentrate. Remember what it feels like to be tangled in the Force, and then pull against those strings to ensnare your purpose."

She was too tense. He needed her to loosen her mind and her body. He took her palm in his gloved hand and curled it around the rock. "Close your eyes."

She peered at him with blatant wariness before closing them, and immediately he could feel her seizing up, the tautness of the Force creating an unyielding barrier around her. He concentrated, inching along outside of it and working, almost like a massage, to loosen her and give him access. She resisted. He didn't push back, but let off some of his pressure and allowed her to adjust before trying again. In this way, he could gently tune her to the Force, leading by example, or like an instructor adjusting the body of a dancer, and when she opened her eyes again, it was to see his palm cradling her own, and the black stone hovering noncommittally in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, making things up about the Force and how it applies to the Sith and Jedi. Like, the Force surrounds every living thing, but the Jedi make a big show of moving rocks, which are not living? Feel free to give feedback, I love hearing people's theories. Maybe I'm missing some crucial Star Wars lore.
> 
> I'm anticipating a slowed output over the next few weeks, so I encourage anyone who are not already to follow me on Tumblr for updates!


	13. Cause and Effect

To say Rey did not understand Kylo was not completely accurate. Never had another person's inner climate been so accessible to her -- and she did not know if this was something she should expect to share with all people who were sensitive to the Force or if it was particular to the two of them -- and yet still he bewildered her. 

When they trained, they were closer than they ever came, except for their wedding night. He hesitated not to touch her, and yet it was always with the intervening material of a glove or a sleeve, and it did not escape her that when he'd touched her for the first and only time, skin to skin, it was without revealing himself in the light, which reveals all things. Now that she could see him, albeit with the mask, he avoided truly touching her. 

She wondered if there were something objectionable or off-putting about herself. Once or twice she examined herself in the mirror after a bath to look for any obvious deformities or faults. When she paused with her training to take food and drink, it occurred to her for the first time ever that she was unkempt and sweaty, her hair matted into strings by perspiration and exertion.

She’d not had the luxury to think on her appearance before now. Not since she was very small, and she gave up the desire for pretty things because it hurt less that she would never get them if she didn’t want them to begin with. But she guessed that she was decent-looking. She had all her teeth, and her complexion was rough but clear. She thought back on the wedding, when she had worn the sunset gown, and how it had made her feel elevated almost to something more than she was. Did she look beautiful then? Or at least, tolerably well? Did she have anything to offer in the ways of womanly values? She was all bone and gristle, the part of the meat that is picked off and not savored. But she was useful, she knew that much. Maybe she didn’t have to be attractive to him to be wanted.

Not that Kylo was a picture of princely mien. He had a long, stomping stride that she wouldn’t count as graceful. His way of looming, if not drawing attention to his enormous limbs, didn’t help to hide the improbability of them. As for the rest of him, she had hardly any information to go on. The memory of him over her and underneath her fingertips gave her no sense of his beauty or lack thereof, because she had no means with which to compare it. At least, if she could see him, she could tell if he were the kind of man that would not suit her plainness.

And then, one day, Kylo removed the vested material of his shirt, revealing separate sleeves attached to his body by a kind of harness. In this way he was able to shed his clothes but keep the appendages with which he intercepted her hygienic. He should have looked ridiculous -- the massive bare chest of someone otherwise covered head to toe, so that even his face and hands were not visible. But it just gave her the sense of the breadth and tangibility of the man who visited her in the night -- that his body was real and present, good and strong, not just a fancy brought on by the delirium of senseless dark and the grief of an uncertain future.

When he went uncovered, Rey made a point of avoiding him getting too near. She cast disparaging glances at the swell of his creamy, pale skin, curving and smooth as the horns of a bantha. Kylo either ignored her discomfort or didn't care.

But he was far from cruel. Her victories were his victories and her frustrations didn't put him off but compounded his determination. Sometimes, she felt he believed more in her than she could have ever mustered to feel for herself. And that in itself was a frustration. Because he did not allow her to slacken or doubt, but stood behind her like a monolith, the cast of his shadow rotating with the passing day, grounding her and reminding her that time went on and on. She was no longer the little girl suspended in permanent childhood, waiting for her parents to take her away from Jakku. The dawning of this knowledge felt the way it does when one rips a shred of skin from off of a wound that won’t otherwise heal. She didn’t expect to ever return now. What lay ahead was all she had.

Kylo did not return to her bed, which spurred her to wonder where he spent his nights. Not that she cared to share that exquisite and voluminous bed with a near-stranger, whom she wouldn't even be able to recognise should he stand before her face to face. But a faint qualm crept into the corner of her mind, that perhaps he found comfort elsewhere; with some shadow-wife who was his true companion, who looked upon him and knew him in a way that she never could. 

It was a small, silly thought, and Rey was able to dismiss it. There were so few people here in Fortress Vader, aside from the mute cultists; and Jannah, had she been propositioned, was not the sort of person who could maintain the duplicity fundamental to being a silent mistress; Rey felt sure that if anything, small or large, passed between them, Jannah would reveal all, unfiltered, to Rey. The stormtrooper did not bother to lie; it was a useless skill to her. When Rey asked her what work she did while she trained, Jannah stated plainly that she had been promoted to a position which was sensitive and not allowed to discuss, the most sensible, straightforward, and trusting explanation.

Rey had good, sensible company in Jannah, anyway. The passing friendships and associations she had indulged in on Jakku always ended, either by death, unmitigating circumstances, or betrayal. That didn't mean she ever stopped trying, however. Rey needed people; she needed to see and be seen. Perhaps, that was part of what bothered her so much about Kylo. His stubborn mask prevented him from being truly seen by her, and she craved it, craved to behold another like her and with her, as one craves human companionship.

Kylo never actively harassed her about the bio collar. She was not sure how much it monitored or how often he checked up on her. Surely it would alert him to her getting out of range, preventing the need for him to hover, which she supposed was a good for all parties involved. She hoped that its recordings didn't go beyond blood pressure, pulse, and breathing, because after about two standard months in, Rey’s period came. 

She hadn't been expecting it, as it was never very reliable to begin with. But when she woke up in a panic one morning, Jannah was quick to calm her and bring her what she needed.

"It's good," Jannah said. "It means you're healthy. The last doctor to examine you wasn't very pleased to hear that you haven’t experienced a regular cycle, if you recall."

"I try not to," said Rey, who found the interaction with doctors and their sharp little needles distressing.

"Shall I contact the nearest First Order doctor on call? You may be able to receive an implant now."

"No! No, I don't want to see a doctor, and I don't want anything put into my body that doesn't belong there." Rey was adamant, and Jannah didn't appear to feel the need to argue. She could guess the stormtrooper's line of thinking: it's none of my business.

Mustafar's days were even and uniform; they had about four hours before the midday break and four hours after, after which a few more hours of daylight lingered for Rey to dine with Jannah and bathe, before the lights went out and she fell into the deep sleep of one who has worked well, had plenty to eat, and a soft bed in which to sleep.

Today, Kylo tossed rocks at her, letting her block them with a strike of her saber. 

He started out giving plenty of warning, timing so that she was ready before he aimed the next one at her body. Then he began to wait less before launches. When he had them levitating and coming at her like missiles, it was inevitable that Rey would miss hitting one here and there. It wasn't that they hurt -- though they did -- or that she was in a particular discomfort due to the ache low in her belly from her bleed -- but her internalised frustration, first at him, then herself, that sent their day off-kilter. 

She picked up one of the offending rocks and threw it back at him; she should have known that he'd seize it in midair, sending it hurtling back at her. When she went to block it, it bounced off of her laser toward the side of her head, leaving a ringing dent in her temple, and it was all too much: the homogenous days of waking, training, and sleeping; the fear of what lay ahead for her; and the lack of comfort from the one person who _knew_ what she experienced and could shed light on what she was going through. She brandished the training saber and went at him, swinging.

Now, she knew she hadn’t set out to damage -- _much_. She just wanted to grab, to shock, to get his attention long enough to show him that something was wrong, to lure out a reaction. (At least that is what she believed she wanted, after the fact, when she was left alone to her thoughts, tracing over the events that followed.) 

Kylo, of course, could not be caught off guard. His reflexes had him with his lightsaber burning in half a second, blocking her, shoving her away. With an angry cry, Rey lunged one more time at him, reckless as a spice runner, and Kylo swiped her aside as though she were mere detritus and he were clearing a table. Her foot caught at the last instant, and the tip of his saber cut her right arm, a little higher than halfway between shoulder and elbow.

Rey dropped her training saber and gripped her injury. It burned, superficial but stinging. She lost her balance and teeterd backward, landing with the last of her grace onto the crumbling soil. Before she could speak or catalogue her pain, before she could even feel betrayed or afraid or furious, Kylo was upon her, pulling away her grasp so he could get a look.

She watched him, the glossy visor of his mask, the rough edges of the thing that made it look perpetually incomplete, as if his intention was to show that he was unrefined and mad -- an image she got the impression of from his tempestuous thoughts and feelings rather than his external interactions with her. She watched, unable to move, as he pulled off a glove and placed his palm over the bleeding scratch. Which appeared to her, although perhaps it was just the angle, and she was feeling particularly sentimental, like two hands reaching out to clasp. She skimmed her breathing as though not to ripple the water of a still pond. Felt the queer warmth of him pulse into her open wound, spread through her blood stream, travel her body, and come out again, back the way it entered.

When Kylo took his hand away, the scratch was nearly gone. Only a darkened scar of what remained.

***

Kylo panicked. 

He had sensed the build-up of her emotions, the mental block that disallowed him for so long as a Jedi to embrace his inner turmoil and make something fruitful of it. Perhaps, if he could make her feel comfortable enough, safe enough to let out her anger, he could then show her how it could be released; if not to serve her in the Sith way then at least not to enslave her and drown her into its churning cannibalistic depths. So when she came at him, he felt no sense of alarm. Rather, a calm resignation and a willingness to bear whatever blame she needed to put on him in order to overcome. And anyway, it wasn't as though he innocently pelted rocks at her. He expected _some_ backlash from the feral sand gremlin.

What Kylo hadn't anticipated was for her to falter, so that the tip of his saber sliced her arm. He smelled it before he saw it, and felt it before that. Without the lapse of a single heartbeat, his instincts drove him fast as lightspeed: _help_. 

He didn't know what he did next. Couldn't explain it if he'd been asked to. One moment the tension of his neck pulsed and strangled; the next his hand was on the source of their shared distress and pouring into it, using the thread vibrating with the Force all around him -- and especially in the two of them, in the heightened note that shrilled when he touched her skin to skin, sewing and building, prompting her body at its most basic chemical levels to mend itself.

When he pulled his hand away, beholding only the faded scar, it only then dawned to him what he had done. He'd _healed_ her. It was no grave injury, to be sure, but it was not a technique he had ever come across before. Oh, there were rumours -- indefinite and sinister allusions in the fragments of Sith texts that remained to the willing pupil, in salvaged artefacts and relics -- but this was not that. It was too pure, too ... _light_. He withheld a shudder. How long had it been since he'd mingled with the Light side of the force? And how had he made the jump so smoothly and entirely to implement this alarming power? Snoke had told him, one day their kind would outlive death. But never, Kylo knew, could Snoke have imagined the answer lay on the side of Light. What did that mean for him?

He snatched himself away from her as though she were the sacrificial coal from the sacred fire at their wedding ceremony. His own palm scarred still, from that sacred ritual. He thrust his glove onto it as though he could not bear to see its mark on him, and what it meant. Kylo staggered upward and let her gather herself from the ground without help.

"We're finished for today," he said. "Go back to the castle." He did not wait for her to complain or reply but stalked through the forest in the opposite direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the self-indulgent slow burn enemies to lovers begin!


	14. Bedmate

Kylo couldn't think clearly. He needed to go somewhere safe, somewhere that calmed him, and though the silence of his dead grandfather caused him to drift in his devotion of late, his instinct was to go straight to the relic and ask for intercession.

The mask was housed in honour at the temple during its stay on Mustafar, and Kylo found himself in the empty, crude space, with its silent stone watchers, staring up at the vaulted ceilings while kneeling as though in prayer. He sank on the back of his legs and pressed his gloved hand to his eyes, willing himself to clarity with external pressure.

_Grandfather. Help me. The Light chases me. Even now._

But would he really have done differently? The move to intervene when Rey was hurt had passed as thought; it _was_ even as it was known. If he had had some indication that he would have to court the Light to help her, would it have stopped him? 

It seemed whatever Kylo did, he was destined to fail. He failed at being a Jedi. He would not become a Sith. Maybe it didn't matter. But it ate at him like acid. Kylo Ren was supposed to be someone. He was supposed to be whole and worthy where Ben Solo was not.

He decompressed the mask, lifted it over his head, and threw it. It skidded along the rough floor, friction halting it just before smashing into a pillar. In his recklessness, he hadn't considered what he would have done if it'd been damaged. He had other helmets but not with him here on Mustafar. He gathered himself with drooping shoulders and walked over to the helmet, cradling it as if in apology. He turned back to Vader's half-melted mask.

_Please. Please, help me._

His grandfather was the last family he had. Who had come to him when the shame of going to his mother was too much. Whose words held him from the brink when he stared into the eyes of despair. Kylo grasped for him the way a starving man grasps for scraps. Why was Vader silent, now? Now, when Kylo pulled away from Snoke, when he needed him more than ever?

He shook his head, as though to shake off his self-pity.

It's the girl, he thought. She's making me weak.

Kylo had tried not to look the matter straight in the face. But from the moment he left her in the bedroom after their marriage consummation, he knew with a higher sense that he was entangled with her, for better or worse. She was supposed to be his salvation. But what if she was his undoing? His grandfather had had a wife. He had defied the Jedi to have her. Kylo wished he knew more. What little he did know he recalled from stories from his childhood, mostly from 3PO, his mother's etiquette droid who stood in for a human nanny. He was the only one who had known her, the sad and beautiful senator from Naboo. Kylo wished he could know more, about the nature of their relationship, about what she was like. But when he brought her up to Vader in the past, his grandfather had always skirted over the topic, and Kylo feared to press.

Kylo knew that by the time Darth Vader ascended as a great lord of the Sith, his wife was long out of the picture. Still, it would have helped, to be able to go to someone, to ask how he was doing. The only other example he had to look to for a marriage was that of his mother and father; even if he loathed to think on them for more than was necessary, theirs was not an ideal union. His father chafed under the pressures of his mother's station. Toward the end, he was gone from her more often than not.

Kylo took a breath and lowered the helmet back over his face. It sealed into place. He was acting like a coward, running from what he did not understand. He must be better than that. He decided to go to Rey. They needed to understand one another. They needed to talk.

***

Rey didn't hurry back to her room, but walked the long way along the meandering corridors of the castle, swinging her training saber. If she passed anyone, she didn’t notice. When she entered the Red Room, it was empty of Jannah, and she felt relieved; she wasn't sure what she could say if her friend asked her what happened. I lost it and attacked my husband and master? He hurt me, then undid it like it was nothing? I felt him in me, I felt him...

She paced the room, pausing every now and then to run her fingers along the scar on her arm and look at it, to make sure it was still there. He'd put his bare hand on her, for the second time, and healed her -- then dismissed her as though it were her fault and she'd done something wrong.

Rey sat for an indeterminate time in the tempest of her confusion. Then a strong knock on the door yanked her out, and her head snapped up to see Kylo striding in without having waited for an invitation.

She stood to attention as he entered, direct and purposeful. He came around the other side of the bed, stood with his arms at his hips, and stared at her. Rey smoothed her hair. Her hands sought something, anything to occupy them, so she clasped them together to keep from fidgeting.

Kylo spoke. "You have questions. About what happened."

Rey chewed her lip, found something interesting in the far corner of the ceiling to study. With her eyes fixed safely away, she said, "I don't really know what to think."

He sighed through the respirator in his mask and walked around the bed to her. Gestured to a pair of chairs, indicating her to sit. She lowered herself to the edge of a seat. He waited until she was settled to follow her. The upholstered, high-backed chair was too small for him, and his knees sat high. He kept them parted so as not to obstruct his view of her, and the leisured posture put Rey more on edge than she already was.

She twisted her hands in her lap, absently rubbing the place on her arm where her wound had been. "Is that ... normal? To do that...?"

"In truth," Kylo said, "I have never done such a thing before."

She looked at him, too astounded to check her overweening attention. " _Really_?"

"Really. I'm not even sure how I did it. I mean, I used the Force. You and I both know that. But I'm not sure I would be able to do it again if I were required."

Rey licked her lips and looked down, nodding. Was this his way of warning her?

"I am sorry," she said. "For lashing out like that."

A beat, and she intuited he was giving her one of his sideways looks, studying her from a different angle. "It doesn't matter. What I need from you now is to understand that no one can know about it."

Her eyes went to his visor, brow focused. She was right about his tilted head.

"It appears that we have stumbled accidentally upon arcane knowledge. I've only ever known passing references to such things, in ancient texts. The old Sith masters searched in vain for such technology, to no avail. If it got out that you and I were -- that we had access to it, even briefly, it would endanger our lives."

"But I don't know anything," Rey said. "You did it. I was just ... the means."

She knew with her sense-beyond-sense that he studied her again, and his silence unsettled. But he did not correct her.

"I've been working with you on strengthening your dominion over your own mind and the effect you have in the Force. It is very important that you continue with your exercises, outside of formal training. Up until now we've had no reason to fear an invasion by a malicious entity, and Snoke is satisfied with what he gets from me. He has no reason to suspect me of withholding from him. That may change at any moment, and you must be prepared to hide essential things about yourself. When my Knights lifted you from Jakku, it took no effort at all for me to read you like an open book."

Rey felt like retorting that it served him well enough at the time but bit back her tongue.

"Do you understand what I'm saying? Our safety very well might depend on this."

She nodded, huffing. "I understand! I just ..."

"What? You just what?"

She fisted her hands into her shirt. "I would like to be kept up to speed about more than just things that put our lives in mortal danger!"

He was quiet for a long time, and Rey feared she’d angered him. Then he said, "What do you mean?"

She sucked in a breath. "I mean, you never tell me anything about the outside world, about what is going on in the First Order, what your place in it is, what my place is! All I get from you are cryptic warnings about our precarious position, our transgressive marriage, but -- I'm supposed to be your wife, aren't I? What else do you want or need from me? I'm not just a pet for you to train. I'm here. I want to be _useful_. I want to have some sort of say in my life and my circumstances! I only ever see you when you're training me, and we don't talk about anything but that. You refuse to show me your face. I don't even know where you go at night. For all I know there is some woman who shares your bed and your confidence!"

Rey tried very hard not to let her voice warble, to keep the telltale tremble from her lips and her eye contact steady and not confrontational. But when the mention of a mistress slipped out, her voice broke, and she leapt from the chair and turned, walking several paces away with her back to him, in order to compose herself free from his observation.

She breathed, focusing on the feeling of the expanse and collapse in her diaphragm. No feelings, no thoughts, just the comfort of her body's internal workings. When awareness returned, she felt his eyes on her, like hooks in her skin. He hadn't moved, but his curiosity curled out toward her, hovering like fingers over her hair.

She pressed her lips together. Turned to face him, in this physical plane and the next, opening herself just a fraction, like cracking the window in a room ajar.

He put his hands on his knees and stood but did not move toward her. "There's no woman," he said. "There's no one. Just you."

The last two words shuddered through her; the soft reflectiveness of them, like being wrapped in a cloud.

Heat flooded her body. It radiated from her cheeks. "Why don't you come to my bed at night?"

His hand went to the bottom rim of his mask, like a gesture of thought. "Do you want me to?"

"No! No, I just ... would like to know. If there was someone else. You must have ... you must be ... wanting. For company, I mean."

"I make it a point not to let my baser instincts rule me."

Rey crossed her arms, feeling exposed despite her clothing. Were they really talking about what she thought they were talking about?

"I don't care," she said. "I wondered. That's all."

He started to move toward the door, but turned at the threshold. "I will make a point to include you more, in my state of mind and in my affairs. But understand that I am a solitary creature. You may be my wife but no one has the kind of intimacy with me you seem to require." He took one step out of the door and paused again. "Be in bed tonight before the lights go out. And do not tamper with the fuligin, or we'll have a problem."

***

Rey's attempts to meditate were undermined utterly. Her nerves kept her from eating, and when Jannah asked if she felt ill, Rey answered that she was "fine, fine, nothing's wrong at all" with such over-insistence that she knew she came off exponentially suspicious. When the attendants came in with the fuligin trappings, Jannah gave her a look which Rey avoided meeting. Then the stormtrooper excused herself and Rey was left alone to count down the minutes until the lights extinguished. 

She rummaged in her wardrobe -- a new, more modern piece of furniture, ugly and in line with First Order issue, brought in to replace the damaged one. After trying on and discarding several sets of bed clothing, from the practical to the outlandish, Rey put on a long cotton nightgown and slipped beneath the sheets.

In the pitch dark the sound of her breathing echoed loud. She waited, unable to sleep, until she heard the sound of the pneumatic door puffing open and closing. She didn't move. Barefooted steps magnified across the floor; the bed jarred as a large body climbed in and slid under the covers.

She lay still, holding her breath. After a while, the body didn't move. So Rey turned from one side to the other, so that she faced her bedmate where he lay. Her voice carried small in that large darkness. "Kylo?"

"Shhh. You should be asleep."

The sound of his voice without the filter of his mask ran raw along her nerves; goosebumps jumped out along her skin. She must be broadcasting her trepidation in the Force, the knotting and unknotting of her insides, which he had only so recently scolded her for.

"Krayt," he said, his voice firm and physical next to her comparative blindness. "Your thoughts are loud enough to wake the dead. Don't make me regret this. I am very tired."

"S-sorry.” She slipped an arm beneath her pillow and curled her knees toward her body, trying to silence the racket in her mind.

After another long period of her faltering attempt, Kylo shook the bed with a large sigh.

***

Kylo ought to have gotten up and left because his presence only put her on edge -- and that anxiety rattled back to him, keeping him awake. But he couldn't bring himself to abandon her. 

She had been so direct with him when she spoke of her slight. It hadn't occurred to him that all this time she felt as though she were being treated as a pet and a prisoner. In one sense, that was what she was: she did not have permission to come and go, and her health and mental state were monitored for his consideration. 

But she was more than a mere apprentice, and pretending that were not the case did no one any favours. If he'd been able to commune with his grandfather ... get some sound advice about how a master of the Dark Side approached companionship ... but he was alone in this, or rather, alone _with Rey_ in it. The two of them, thrown into the deep of it and forced to swim, so that the two of them must figure it out, together. 

It was only rational; in order to help himself, he must help her first.

After what seemed like eons, Rey slipped into sleep. He knew not only from her regular, shallow breathing, but from the lull of her in the Force, the waves of opalescent light, how he experienced her, receded to a gentle lapping. He slept too. 

In the night, Rey migrated toward him, so that when his body woke him, as it did each morning, before even the planet had turned to its sun, he found she rolled across the open space in the bed between them and now lay flush against him, back to back. If he turned he'd flatten her. Instead, he rolled around to his front, narrowly missing a fall from the bed, and turned his face on the pillow so as not to obstruct his breathing. 

Maybe she meant it when she said she didn't want him to join her. But there had been enough doubt in his read from her that he determined he could get away with testing out her company. The last time he had shared a bed with someone he had been a very small boy, joining his parents after a night split by terrors. And he found that, once again, having a comforting body near, his nightmares abated.

Kylo would be sure to be gone by the time she woke. But for a while he let himself bathe in her unsuspecting proximity, washing over him like gentle surf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we're approaching an "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" motif, with the mysterious man sharing the heroine's bed at night, though in the daytime she lives with a beast.


	15. Honeymooning

Rey would not have guessed, after taking so long to fall asleep, that she'd have the best rest in her life. She woke to the sound of attendants rustling, the rose light hazing through as they pulled down the curtains. 

Kylo was gone. The space where he had been, which she was nearly on top of now, was cold. Her heart dipped a fraction at the revelation. He hadn't tried to touch her; she ran hot and cold at the prospect. Now that she knew there wasn't another woman involved -- and she believed him; Kylo was many things but he was not a liar -- she breathed easier at the thought of him sleeping elsewhere. She wasn't sure if she were ready to try sex again; but for all her fortitude in the face of a challenge, she wanted desperately to be wanted. 

Once it had been by a family. That dream faded with every day she spent away from Jakku. And now that she had distance between her and it, she could look sideways at her expectations and carefully, carefully suppose that no one had been coming back for her. Her hope had hid her heart's answer for her because she couldn't live with it. Her parents were nobodies. Filthy junk traders or itinerant desert dwellers who sold her to be rid of her. She was a nobody. 

But she was not a nobody to Kylo Ren.

Even if he did not particularly like her, he had on more than one occasion admitted his dependence on her. And she was prepared to guess that dependence wasn't something that could be easily severed. Even if she had not been certain of the sobriety of their religious union, as viewed by the many silent Alazmec, and even Snoke himself, to the point that he, very likely the most powerful entity in the galaxy, declined to separate them. Even if that were not true, there was this connection between them. That was undeniable. He was teaching her what it meant to be in touch with the Force. And more than the external factors, there were powerful internal ones in being Force sensitive as well. Such as Kylo's ability to go into her mind and see her vulnerability. And though she had yet to submerge herself into him as thoroughly as she had on their first meeting, before she even recognised what it was she did, she caught glimpses of him. His anger churned dark and purple, crackling over the horizon. But there was light beyond, or the promise of it. And the anger was not for her, never for her. She lived beside it as one lives with a wild beast. Cautious but enthralled, a bit drunk on the privilege of beholding something so beautiful and strong from so near.

And he _was_ strong. Not just in body, as was evident by how he repelled her easily when she had the bad judgement to strike at him, but in his will as well. She had the impression of him now, more than ever, of a powerful note running through the background of her entire life. So it was with consternation that she considered his apparent tameness when it came to her -- and especially when it came to bedding her. On their wedding night, she'd gotten the sense that he could have devoured her. But he held back. Now that she knew it was not for the love of another woman, she was half curiosity and half relief.

Their training proceeded as normal the following day, and neither party brought up the night before -- a fact for which she was, yet again, split in her feelings. She did remind him, however, that he'd promised to be more forthcoming with his affairs. So during their usual break, when Kylo meandered and Rey ate, he let her ask questions.

"One at a time," he said. "And I retain the right not to answer."

She munched moodily on a pear but decided to forge ahead before he changed his mind.

"Who are the Knights of Ren, really? And how did you become the master of them?"

"The Knights of Ren," Kylo said, "are Force-sensitive warriors who are loyal to the Dark Side of the Force. They existed long before I had anything to do with them. But I became their leader the way most servants of the Dark Side rise to power: by killing their master."

It was true that it was not the first time the practice had been described to her. She showed her distaste by a curl of her lips.

"So you've said. You intend for me to help you kill your master. Do you anticipate that I will in turn kill you?"

"That's entirely your prerogative."

"That's not a very satisfactory answer."

"What would you have me say? You are more than welcome to try. And if you succeed it is because you are all the more worthy; I can take comfort in knowing I trained you well."

Before she knew what she did, the pear core hurtled toward him. He didn't even flinch as it ricocheted off his arm.

"You're going to have to try harder than that," he said flatly.

"You're an idiot."

"And you're a feral sand rat. I'd say that makes us pretty evenly matched."

Rey's face burned. She stood abruptly. "Just. Shut up. And show me how to do the eighth technique of Shii-Cho again."

***

Other questions came; some were answered, some passed over. 

They made progress in their training, and Kylo allowed her to move on to the Makashi combat style, which focused on tight control rather than the sweeping, elegant arcs of Shii-Cho. Rey proved deft at abrupt, quick movements, which she picked up during her lifetime of work as a scavenger. Kylo seemed pleased with her right away and told her that Makashi was best utilised in saber to saber combat.

"When will I ever have to fight someone with another lightsaber?" Rey asked, almost dreading an anticipated answer from him: me.

But Kylo Ren said, "It's not a very useful form these days. The Jedi and Sith are all but gone, so the likelihood of coming up against a saber-wielding enemy is slim. Still, it's important that you know it. When you've got more comfortable, you and I will practice sparring with training sabers."

"Where are the Knights of Ren now?" she asked over one well-earned meal.

"Away. I've sent them to Snoke to do his bidding and keep him happy."

"How do you know they won't turn on you?"

"I don't. But for now, we have nothing to worry about from them."

"How do you know I won't?"

A snort, which might have been a laugh. "You wouldn't be able to hide it from me, krayt. I'd see it coming from a mile away."

And over her gasping breath when they walked, back and forth, back and forth, touching their training sabers together to feel out the rhythm of blocking and striking: "What do you do for Snoke, when you're not honeymooning on lava planets?"

"He sends me in when he needs something dealt with efficiently. I've seen combat from space and from the battlefield, but he mostly sends me out for missions such as reconnaissance and assassination."

Rey fumbled in her steps, and Kylo had to catch her by the wrist to keep her on her feet.

When they walked back to the castle before parting for the evening: "What happens, after I finish my training?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead yet. Have you been practising your meditations every morning, like I told you?"

And one day: “Do you have parents?”

His answer was swift and ruthless. “No. Not anymore.”

“Wh-what happened to them?”

“That is a topic I will not discuss.”

Kylo continued to visit her bed at night, but only to sleep. It grew easier and easier as the nights passed on, and soon she came to expect it, so that she waited for him in the time between when the lights went out and when he joined her under the covers. He kept a respectful distance between them, and even allowed the briefest conversation -- usually regarding what they would do tomorrow or how she had performed earlier in the day. He wasn't in the mood for questions, as he was always tired. His fatigue weighed his voice, already queer-sounding without the mask. He had an informal way of talking, smooth and low, and Rey thought he would make a good singer, if he ever had the mind to do it. 

It was usually in these brief times of sightless intimacy, between lying down and falling asleep, that bits of Kylo's past were revealed to her. He never answered questions about his heritage or childhood directly, but he let slip that he sometimes had nightmares, so not to be alarmed if he cried out in his sleep; or that he was accustomed to sleeping in all sorts of places, including the bunk of a Corellian light freighter; the shards of his mosaic came together, disjointed and colourful.

If she were feeling particularly emboldened, Rey might share a memory of her own. They were unremarkable but they were hers, and while he didn’t much comment, he didn’t shoot her down, either. He digested what she told him with that inscrutable silence, heavy and hungry.

One night Rey did wake, not to sound but sensation. It woke her from the inside out, and in her groggy half-sleeping state, it took her a while to realise that it came from him. 

She heard him, moaning low, tossing his head in the pillow. She reached for him, her fingers brushing over the bulge of an Adam's apple, and trailed her fingers upwards -- lightly, so lightly -- to skim his damp forehead. (The sharp planes of his face were just as fresh in her memory as the last time she touched him.) The echoes of the dream came to her, in flashing images, raw and unfiltered: a room in the moonlight; a humming saber; a figure bending over with fear so potent it could suffocate. It frightened her. She could not begin to fathom what it did to him. So she scooted closer, keeping her fingertips on his brows, and tried to focus on the bad images, sucking them out like poison. She imagined other things: dew gathered in the recesses of Empire wreckage, cool and moist; the merry jangle of percussion when the scavengers gathered to celebrate a lucrative haul; the airy laughter of a baby. 

Presently, Kylo stilled and went quiet. Rey drew her hand away and settled back into her pillow, facing him but not touching, letting the rhythm of his breathing lull her back into sleep.


	16. Improvement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last! Comment and make my day?

Rey grasped the Makashi style with relative ease, and Kylo was pleased to be able to move onto sparring. As a padawan it had been his least favourite aspect of Jedi training. It brought him close to another person, and he was required to hold back and not to injure. 

With Rey, these concerns dispersed. He'd acquired a level of control that he lacked as a youth. What was more, he knew that if he pushed Rey past her comfort zone, she'd be able to handle it. They were yet mismatched in skill but Rey would soon catch up to him. She picked up, as through osmosis, his strategic moves and could use them against him to considerable effect. If they hadn't been using training sabers, they would have sustained substantial injuries.

Between their shared sleep at night and sparring during the day, the two of them found themselves in closer and closer proximity. 

Rey was lovely to watch. Her crude but measured movements suited the compactness of her body, which she played to her advantage. Sometimes Kylo wished to take off the mask, to view her free of any barrier between them, in the revealing daylight. But he dismissed the temptation as poor judgement. No one had seen his face since he donned the mask and persona of Kylo Ren; to do so would be to admit to himself that the man Ben Solo remained, a weak and unwanted mistake he would never be rid of. 

No, this was better. With the mask he could be the person he had fashioned for himself. No one would know the truth.

Rey asked for a datapad. He didn't see why she shouldn't have one.

"I should think you don't have much time to use it," he said, handing it to her after the conclusion of their training one day. "Between your training, your meditation, and the necessary upkeep of your body, which is your most powerful weapon."

Rey gave him a curt nod that was her way of ignoring him.

"Rey," he said, as she flipped the device in her hands, searching for a way to activate it. "You need to make sure you're getting enough fluids, and not just during sparring. It's important for your circulation." Because she'd found the on switch, and he'd lost her entirely, he added for the benefit of no one in particular, "Your feet are damn cold enough."

It was an unfortunate side effect of bedsharing that Rey's cold feet found their way to the backs of his knees or soles of his own, shocking him from shallow sleep. She was an irredeemable bed hog, and though they started out the night each on their own sides of the expansive bed, she found her way across the space and crowded up against him every morning without fail. It was ridiculous. She was half his mass! How could she require so much bloody room? 

After a few nights of being corralled to the very edge, Kylo determined that he would not be bossed about in his own bed, in his own castle, on his own planet by an unconscious scavenger, and took preemptive measures. As soon as he gleaned she was asleep, he spread himself on his side and pushed toward the center, so that when she inevitably rolled toward him, she'd not have as much territory to occupy. If he gave himself room to migrate during the night, he would avoid either uncomfortable scenario of ending up on the floor or ending up as a body pillow.

Sometimes, though, she would shift toward him, and instead of scooting away, he would let her draw near enough for their bodies to touch. Cold feet aside, Rey's near presence comforted him. He'd gone so far as to admit it to himself, he might as well let it do its work. The nights that followed he was more rested, and rarely recalled a nightmare.

Kylo was almost always up and out of the room before she stirred, so that he felt it a justifiable risk to lounge for a short period of time in the mornings. Waking gradually and tuning himself to the sound of her breathing, her bare forearm sprawled over his chest with her palm facing upwards, fingers flexing like a little claw. On an impulse he folded his own arm up toward his chest and clasped her hand in his. The answering squeeze was faint. He lay there, with his hand tucked in hers against him, for a long time.

***

Jannah was given access to the control room in the castle tower and a guest password to access limited information and applications. She spent her days monitoring First Order chatter and zeroing in on suspicious content. If the work got mundane, she stepped outside to the balustrade to take some air and view the milling clouds over the temperamental landscape. 

Somewhere in the woods below, Rey and Lord Ren were training in the ancient art of Sith and Jedi, and Jannah allowed herself a mild curiosity. Rey came back after their daily practice exhausted and sometimes bruised. Her appetite was improving, and she ate more freely from the dishes as her stomach adjusted to her new diet.

One day Rey brought back a datapad and asked Jannah to show her how to use it. 

***

Having the datapad opened up new avenues of learning to Rey. Its scope and detail amazed her. 

She could watch live footage on a planet in the Core, capture images herself that were then shown back to her as holograms, and hear music of varying peoples and cultures. There were articles available in every conceivable tongue, stored in its infinite cache; but when Rey ventured to read on the entire history of the galaxy, available at her fingertips, she was puzzled. The bit she knew did not match with what she was reading at all. Perhaps there was a disconnect between the stories common people told and the official history written down for scholars and politicians; but some of it was so incongruous as to seem a different account entirely. 

For one, she could find virtually no information on the founding and history of the Jedi order. What little there was available spoke of them as rebels and malcontents, whose unbridled enthusiasm for the Light side of the Force created inequality and suffering throughout the galaxy. No mention was made of the wars between the Jedi and the Sith, a little about which Kylo himself had spoken; nor about the role of the Jedi in the Old Republic as advisors and peacemakers. In fact, the records of the Old Republic were acerbic, hardly neutral. 

When Rey read a bit of her findings to Jannah, Jannah thought it sounded about right. But Rey wasn't so sure. 

***

Rey was troubled and thought about asking Kylo why the information she could access with her First Order datapad did not match up with the common knowledge even the smallest child of scavenger society could parrot as soon as he was old enough to squeak. But Kylo was more grumbly than usual, and Rey decided to put the topic off for the time being. By certain things he dropped in conversation and his general moodiness, Rey gathered he'd had recent dealings with Snoke. And if this wasn't enough of an indicator, he insisted on breaking with their usual routine to practice mental fortification.

"Have you been doing the meditation exercises I've assigned you?"

Rey answered noncommittally, but Kylo was having none of it. He put his hand under her jaw, firmly but without pressure, and angled her face to look up at him. He was reading her sincerity in her eyes, but the imbalance was palpable. She couldn't read him back. So she pulled his grip off of her and pretended to be interested in the switch on her training saber.

"Rey, it is important that you learn as soon as possible to protect your mind from invasion."

"I know."

"If you know, then show me. Show me how you'd defend against my prying."

"Right now?"

"Right now."

She fidgeted with her saber for a moment more before clipping it to her belt. "All right."

He led them to sit and face one another, the girth of a third sitter between. Rey'd grown accustomed to Kylo's steady presence alongside her consciousness, but her nerves recalled their first encounter -- his powerful plunge into the depths of her subconscious -- and later, Snoke's crashing through the labyrinth of her mind, pawing at private places and pillaging for things that did not belong to him. This was why Kylo wanted to do this, she knew. He didn't want Snoke to hurt her that way ever again. It was cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

She waited for what felt like a long time. Eyes closed. Breathing even. She needn’t have been worried. The sense of Kylo grew in her mind. A cloud overshadowing her. The impression was one of a sleepy dark blanketing her, and he was already far in when she roused herself and realised she was supposed to be fighting him off. Rey couldn't get her footing, though. The sensation of having him so far inside, which she could only compare to drowsiness, though she was not in any way impaired by him, didn't feel the way it had before: it was not at an incongruous protrusion, upsetting the order of her inner world, but a kind of key that slid into place, touching neurons and feelings that otherwise lay dormant.

She knew his exasperation was imminent. Even as the purple storm clouds of his presence crackled with silent lightning on the further side. Still, she couldn't bring herself to expel him. Somehow, in the past months, his careful cultivation of her, his pruning and his tilling, had guided her to growth in such a way that the two of them entwined. And, for better or worse, to extract him from her felt as jarring as trying to take off her own limb.

***

They lay in their deep quiet in the time before sleep that night. Rey was restless. Her shape faced toward him in the bed and said, "I can't sleep."

"That sounds like a personal problem. No need to share with the committee."

She huffed, and he knew, though he could not see, that she rolled her eyes.

He was still put out that she hadn't been able to push him from her mind; convinced she wasn't trying. She'd expelled him with such force previously, he knew she was capable. But the sand gremlin was stubborn. And the more he suggested something, the harder he pressed for it, the more she resisted. So in the end he let it be.

"Kylo?" The soft, up-ending sound of her voice caught his attention.

"Hm?"

"You said once that you've dealt with Snoke in your life for longer than anyone. How did you mean?"

"Snoke is ... our relationship is complicated. He has been with me since as far back as I can remember. Even before I could put my finger on it, or understand fully what it was, he was there. Like you. You were there, too, but -- Snoke was an orchestrator, a conductor making broad movements and sweeping changes. You were a, a tempo. Ordering things and fading into the music, not making your presence known."

A tight silence followed, and Kylo realised he had never shared this with her before. Was it too much? He waited to feel the sting of laying his innards bare. But it never came.

"Do I ...? Am I like Snoke? Inside your head?" 

How could she sound so fragile? It wasn’t safe.

"No," he said. He needed her to bounce back, to be her robust self, so that he wouldn’t risk breaking her. "No, you’re not. For two reasons. You don't plough your way through the way he does. He's a conqueror, but you're, you're a -- _native_. And second. There's too much light in you. Far, far too much. You're practically blinding."

The minutes trickled by to the sound of their breathing. Then, "Why don't you ever touch me?"

Kylo's heart tripped. Touch--? What? "I didn't think you liked it very much."

He heard her move, the sighing of covers, the whisper of skin. "It was all right."

His face flamed. "Just all right?"

He could picture her. The flush of freckles bridging her nose. Her way of baring her teeth, just so, on the offensive. Good, he thought. Yes, fight me. When we fight I can tell we’re alive. 

"Yes, _all right_. Are you used to exorbitant praise from previous companions?"

He worked at deciphering her words. The full implication of her barb settling even as he spoke. "It was my first time. Just like you."

He wasn't sure whether this was an effective defence of his lacking; what he _was_ sure of was that he didn't like thinking he'd got a better deal out of it that she had -- whether from pride or, what was a little more sore to examine further, a concern for her to feel comfortable and safe with him. He liked the idea of being able to touch her in a way nobody had before. His body warmed to the prospect of opening her to his raw sensation, to pour himself into her and have her pour back, his own self but different, tainted with her and changed, swirled through with her rippling light, as veins in marble.

He heard her swallow. Could imagine the drag of her tongue on her lips. "You could ... you could try to improve upon all right ... if you want."

Kylo's breathing went sharp in his nose. The heat spread from his face to his limbs and other parts of his body. He put a hand out and fumbled; it landed on her waist; he tugged.

"I want."


	17. Collision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As my beta said, enjoy 15,000 emotions in under 1.5k words!

Kylo did indeed improve upon _all right_.

It helped that his body was no longer a stranger to her. If she had been right off of Jakku, his attentions, far more focused and intense than the first, might have overstimulated her touch-starved skin. But after their months of close training and even closer sleeping arrangement, Rey knew him in a way that she hadn't on their first night together. He wasn't so much an invasion as a visitor. And she found her own body much more accommodating. 

Of course it helped that he wasn't intent on getting a task done. He took his time with her, and, she imagined, worked from stored away knowledge of her, too. His scrutinising attention on her in the irontree wood must have brought him a better understanding of the working of a woman's body. He was much more deft at piloting her hips, and though his hands were large, almost to the point of caricature, his nails were short and his fingertips warm and tapered. He ran the backs of his fingers along her and felt for the answering reaction on her skin.

She didn't have to use many words. Either Kylo was adept at measuring her nonverbal cues, or he peeked into her mind while it was otherwise distracted, because he caught on to what worked and what didn't and soon had her vocalising his success. 

It was too much. If it hadn't already been darker than pitch, Rey would have wanted to crawl into the nearest hole to hide. If he said something now, if he made one wrong choice of words or indicated his derision for her, she would never let him touch her again. 

But he didn't laugh at her. He stroked her flank, with that muted pride she was accustomed to from him when she could recite back a lesson, asked something insightful, or out-manoeuvred him in their sparring.

And sex at its essence _was_ a kind of spar. It had an underlying aggression, of two opposite but complementary forms colliding. She felt a confused and confusing mix of resentment and satisfaction: of being subdued somehow but of not altogether disliking it. It didn't help that he was averse to her touching him with the same freedom that he did her. The many silvered scars she saw on him when he went bare in the woods were available now for close, sensory examination. But Kylo kept taking her hands away from him and planting them on the bed along her sides.

Balance was soon restored, however. This time, when Kylo breached her, she reached for him, let the tendrils of her awareness tangle in his own, the way her fingers combed hesitantly into the softness of his hair. He was too far gone to shoo her away; open, more open than he had ever been to her, and she wondered, half excitement and half fear, if he'd been able to read her as easily. At his moment of brutal vulnerability, exposed and trembling, she saw things -- or rather, knew them. Images intangible and yet real: a woman with braids and a broad smile; dappled sunlight on the treetops as the shadow of a ship flashed beneath; the click of two golden dice and the smooth-and-weighted feel of them rolling between the fingers. And a word. No, a name. Airy but clear. _Ben_. 

His mouth found its way to hers and kissed her, ragged and sloppy, even as he held back the sounds of his submission. They shook through her body, and she knew, no matter what came to pass, she would remember them all her life. 

And she didn't even bite him.

***

Kylo shouldn't indulge his base desires. He shouldn't allow himself to become yet more vulnerable and attached. He shouldn't care, with a spreading warmth blanketing his thighs, that she wanted him back. Well, perhaps not him, but something he could give her. He shouldn't want to give her that. But he did. He _did_ want.

He remembered watching her fly from his knights. He remembered the mixture of fear and determination that wafted off of her, strapped to the interrogation table with no possible way of escape, headier than drink. He'd wanted her then, too. Perhaps even this way. Something in him recognised her. Even before he realised she'd been with him in the Force all along, quiet but essential in the background of its architecture.

She wanted to be wanted. He could taste it over the Force, a faint bitter flavor that characterised everything she did, everything she thought, everything she was. And why shouldn't she be wanted? It wasn't just that she was magnificent and powerful and completely new. Those things were incidental. They couldn't have been without the lowest common denominator, the foundation of her, unburnished and unyielding. Indestructible but so precious, so worthy of protecting.

Rey was pliable and cooperative and curious. When she tried to touch him back, it was too much. He needed to grasp the last shreds of his control. But even though he took her hands away from him, they drifted back, like butterflies drawn to flowers.

And in the end, the only thing left … was her. She could have done anything to him in that moment, could have plunged a lightsaber through him and he would have submitted himself to her execution. She was good, good, so good. His good, brave, strong, soft scavenger. His own wife. His. 

_Please don't destroy me._

At last, he covered her mouth with his and waited for thought and reason to return.

***

He clung to her in his sleep, his limbs folded around her as though he were a child and she were his stuffed toy, a sentinel of fancy guarding from nightmares. Rey remembered how she'd pawed her own ragged doll, pieced together from bits of fabric and thread, and couldn't resent him. Though she kicked the covers well off because he made her hot enough.

She dozed but woke to his pants of distress, the miasma of his nightmare spooling in the base of her neck. She rotated toward him in his arms and put her hand out to his cheek. Now that she faced him, his closeness was unavoidable, and she shivered. She could almost picture the map of his face as she felt it, stroking and coaxing the distress from his clenched jaw.

The nightmare dissipated beneath her studied touch, and she felt, with alternate senses, the way he gradually left sleep and rose to the surface of consciousness. His voice, syncopated and unpolished, was near enough to raise the tiny hairs where his breath traced her cheek.

"What are you doing?"

It was not an accusation. It sounded plaintive and confused, and Rey drew her hand away slowly.

"Who is that man?" She hadn't known it was what would come out before she said it. "Who stands over you in the dark, with the lightsaber and the wild eyes?"

Kylo was silent for a long time, while Rey hung in the balance, fearful of where her direct and prying question might push him.

Relief spread in her like the warming sun when he said, "My uncle. He tried to kill me. In my sleep."

Her relief shattered. "Y-your uncle? Why would he--?"

"He looked into my mind and was afraid of what he found there." Kylo's voice, usually steady, sounded brittle. "But, it wasn't just that one moment. It was a buildup, over time, of his doubts and fears for me. Looking into mind, submerged into the darkness there -- it was only the final step of a long and inevitable road for us."

This was not -- no, this was not the Kylo Ren who commanded with confidence and authority, who took her sass and served it back to her with a large portion of I-told-you-so. Not the one who'd drawn pleasure out of her like a charmer draws a coiled snake. This was the defeated man she'd glimpsed before, in brief flashes -- such as when he spoke of Snoke's occupation of his mind as a conqueror.

His arm rested loosely on her hip, and the other curled beneath her, cradling. Why, in all the millions of planets and crowding stars, had all the galaxy conspired to trample this one man? It was no wonder he wore a mask. Who could blame him for hiding?

Rey fingered the smooth band around her neck. She made her voice steady, pronounced every word with the finality of a closing door, when she said, "He should not have done that to you."

The answering dissonance of emotions from him worried her. But his rising storm sank, as quickly as it had risen, and he answered quietly, with a note of wonder, both alien and inviting: "Thank you."

Then Kylo fell on her, mouth crashing against mouth, and devoured her.

**Author's Note:**

> englishable is my beta, as always! All mistakes are my own!
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr @theOriginalSuki


End file.
